


Resurgence

by thural



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Body Horror, Frottage, M/M, Oral Sex, Science, other kinds of horror, sex in front of an audience, weird medical procedures, you resurrected in the wrong gayborhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:52:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9139837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thural/pseuds/thural
Summary: this is a story about reaper becoming gabriel reyes again, physically and mentally, and the extraordinary act of medical perversion that gets him there.this fic now has art by the amazingUgly_Love. Check it outon Tumblr.note: the rape, brutal violence, and child abuse depicted is contained in a video simulation. it's realistic but not real. almost all of it it is in a later chapter that will have a whoooole bunch of warnings at the top of it. no fictional characters that you actually care about were harmed in ways they didn't consent to during the making of this fic.





	1. Chapter 1

He lifted a long grey-brown limb and glumly regarded it. This part was the same flesh rewritten at least, whole and solid. The steam rose off it like the water ran down it, smoothly. He flexed his hand, folded his fingers into the water again, and scooped some up to sprinkle over his shoulders. The tub was not quite big enough to submerge himself in, though he'd given it a shot. His knees stuck up or his head stuck out.  
  
He could liquefy himself totally into the bath. The black storm turned into mud and contained in a porcelain bowl, and if he pulled the plug, he'd drain away. But that wasn't the point today.  
  
He was taking too long with this. The anticipation prickled the back of his mouth. He picked up the soap again; it was a buttery yellow and strongly scented with juniper oil, and it foamed up gorgeously against the washcloth. Angela liked nice salubrious things like this. Then he laved the parts of his chest that poked up out of the water, his pits, again, the wide band of sticky scar tissue that split the center of his breastbone, his belly, carefully over his penis and testicles, then he hauled himself half out of the water to wash his ass crack, then his legs, then he craned his feet up one by one. All of it again. The motion was automatic and old. His thoughts turned slowly in the heat.  
  
A knock sounded.  
  
"You okay in there?"  
  
He took his time answering. Even then the first answer caught in his mouth, which gaped on the humid air. Still, "I'll be done when I'm done."  
  
The response came back almost as hesitant and was accompanied by the tumbling sound of a big body leaning into the door. "Yeah, okay."  
  
Then it was silent again. Reaper waited a while, listening, unwilling to proceed until he was sure Jack had gone. When he was satisfied at last, he rinsed himself off, then ran a little clean water from the faucet to rinse out his mouth. It caught and hung in the scabrous mass that had replaced his lips.  
  
He climbed out of the tub and forgot that he had to dry off in order to be dry. Dripping steaming water over the tiled floor, he looked stupidly at the pile of clothing folded on the sink counter. Those couldn't go on until he was less wet, which was the moment that occasioned the realization about towels, and subsequently led to his roughly rubbing down himself in a way he hadn't had to do for ten years at least.  
  
Was there a point in getting dressed now? Rationally, it didn't matter. But it was what he wanted to do, a part of the order of things. The clothes would trap the heat in. A black t-shirt, plain slacks in a black that didn't match the shirt, a belt, black, and a cheap titanium watch. He watched himself in the mirror as the maws of his wounds were covered over. The last piece was the mask. They'd all collectively decided against his usual one; the chin was dangerous, it was spooky anyway, and that wasn't the point today. Instead there was a cowl and a plain white theatre mask with a blank expression. When he slipped it on and tied the black ribbon band behind his head he felt disconnected to his reflection. He rose a hand to the stranger only to see the stranger raise one back.  
  
Time to go.  
  
When he opened the door Jack was hanging against the frame. Despite himself Reaper recoiled in surprise and hissed.  
  
"Have you been camping here the whole time."  
  
"For a while."  
  
"What do you want. I'm coming."  
  
He shook his white head and stepped closer. Reaper put a foot back. "I don't wanna do it like that. Wanted to change the plan."  
  
Behind the mask Reaper's un-lips curled in a sneer. _Typical Morrison._ Jack continued. "Out there in that lab, we're gonna be watched. You think I'm gonna be able to perform right out the gate with an audience? With a bunch of wires coming out of you, Jesus. What about you, does that do it for you?"  
  
"We had an agreement," The argument was wholly reflexive. Everything had been planned. The idea of changing anything now beat against the inside of his chest painfully. "That's what Ziegler said to do." _That’s what the pills are for_.  
  
"I know what we have to do. We'll get there. I want to start here." He put a hand on Reaper's hip and held him. His mouth was hard and fixed like before a mission drop.  
  
"Get off me." Reaper shoved him back at the shoulder, not hard, not at first. Jack let it roll off and then stepped back in close, his blue eyes fixed on the holes in Reaper's mask. The second shove was much harder and put him against the concrete wall of the unlit corridor. A grin flashed in the darkness.  
  
"Yeah? That was pretty good." He slid back into his enemy's space again with both hands on him, circling his hard waist. Jack felt the deep flexing of his musculature beneath his palms right before Reaper's head dropped and a vicious punch smacked into his gut.  
  
" _Get off me._ "  
  
Jack grabbed for the collar of his shirt. Old, wily, and quick, he caught it in one hand before Reaper could flex out of the way. The fabric groaned as the stitches popped, and he hauled Reaper out into the hallway, fighting to put him back against the wall. Instead, Reaper got a hip on the wall and levered off to fling Jack back in a single long sweep. Another punch whistled after him and caught him across the cheek, hard. Jack's nasty exhale,  _hhhaa_ , wrung out painfully. He raised a hand to his mouth; a dribble of blood came away on his finger.  
  
He glared at the white mask in the dark. Then he darted back in, wary, and as he closed the distance between them he swept off Reaper's incoming punch with one arm and then backed him up against the wall. His forearm flexed thick under Reaper's chin. His quiet fierce voice came from close up, his forehead nearly on the mask, his hot breath damp on Reaper's neck. "I know some part of you wants this."  
  
At that Reaper threw a heavy arm around Jack's shoulders. Jack could feel the heat radiating off him and the sharp smell of that soap. Warmth followed in his wake, though he could feel the tension rippling down Reaper's body. He was on the point of leaning in, getting his hands on Reaper again, when another crushing punch sank into his stomach. A flare of visceral pain bled red over his vision and sucked the breath out of him. He clutched at Reaper, and Reaper pushed him against the other wall and pinned him there. His breath seethed behind the mask. Jack's pale face reeled back; there was pain in his eyes.  
  
"Hurts, huh."  
  
Jack said nothing. Instead he licked away the blood from his mouth again.  
  
"We do this according to plan."  
  
"You mad?" He was getting control of himself again. Reaper could feel him cooling down, relaxing into the hand that crammed him up against the concrete.  
  
"Don't fuck with me, Morrison."  
  
"This piss you off? You all heated?" As the pain leaked out of his gaze something else replaced it, steady and calm like cool water. He dared to put his hand up again, this time on Reaper's shoulder, rubbing the arm that pinned him. It felt hard and tense and smooth. He could barely get enough of a grip on the bulge to squeeze him.  
  
"Fuck you." He bore down on him harder, could feel Jack's ribcage compress and flex, heard the air pushed wheezingly out of Jack's lungs. His big familiar body was right there. His enemy's body.  
  
Jack's answer was hushed, not just because it was a struggle to pull in a breath at all. "You know I'm right." He folded his hand over the back of the one compressing his chest, and was surprised and not surprised when a silent Reaper went along with it, went along with having his fingers intertwined and pulled away. He tried to make his swift inhale and resurgence quiet. Then he placed Reaper's hand back on himself, showing him how to be gentle, sliding from breastbone to the broad span of his chest.  
  
"Touch me. I'm gonna touch you."  
  
He did, seizing Reaper's taut waist again. It felt good, human, more dense than Jack would've thought. Under his thumbs he felt the rise of individual ribs. Unconsciously he leaned his head to one side and studied the body before him, black on black in the thin light cast from the bathroom, exactly as tall as his own. He ran his hands up Reaper's sides and fanned his fingers over his chest and felt the ridges of the scar mass that formed a broad band down his center. Quickly he looked up. But the mask revealed nothing, and Reaper was perfectly still and silent in his grasp. No tension, at least no new tension. His grey hand was still right where Jack left it.  
  
Jack's smooth mouth turned down at the corners. He left off exploring the alien space of Reaper's chest and swept up to his wide shoulders, where he was gratifyingly solid, and then his hands curled around the back of his neck. He rubbed there lightly, like an insincere massage. No response.  
  
"Guess it wouldn't do much good to tell you to relax."  
  
Reaper shifted his weight to his other leg.  
  
"Jesus, Gabe." At that Reaper's fingers flexed against his skin. "Do you hate it that much?"  
  
"You wouldn't understand." His palm slid off Jack's breast, finally, and hung at his side in the neutral position.  
  
"Yeah. Not much I can do about that." He dropped his head and scrubbed a hand over his eyes and brow, runching up all the furrows there. "Okay. Here, listen."  
  
He pulled himself off the wall and started dragging off his grey sweater, then the white t-shirt beneath. When Reaper began to fold his arms in front of himself Jack put a light hand on him and tugged his arm away, guiding it around his own waist. He stepped closer and put his arm across Reaper's shoulders, and all of this was permitted by the silent mask, into which Jack could not look. He put his cheek against its cheek instead. Jack smelled warm and mineral and faintly of sweat. He must have just washed up too.  
  
"Don't think you understand me either. You know what I think about you?" Reaper's back stiffened instantly, Jack felt it. "You know what I thought about the old you?" The story made him looser, and he pulled himself a little closer to Reaper, leaning into him, speaking towards his ear. "I remember you. You took a bullet for me in St. Molineaux."  
  
Reaper snorted. "And Amlapura."  
  
"Yeah, Amlapura too. Went to see you in that field hospital in Molineaux, remember." He trailed off, smiling resentfully. Reaper made an indeterminate sound as Jack hugged him.  
  
"I thought you looked so good on that cot. White bandage on you — " He broke off, rubbing the place on Reaper's chest where it had lain. "Right here. Shit. That... the way you looked, uh, looking out the window." The sharp, clean edge of Gabriel Reyes' jaw, stark against the white pillow, as it led to his throat and his broad bare shoulder that shone with color in the thin light of a winter morning: Jack remembered it decades later, one of hundreds of moments that hung in his memories of Reyes.  
  
Something hard unwound in Reaper's body, word by word. A milky calm in which he became gradually aware of the weight of Jack's body against his and the steadiness of his hands.  
  
"Used to think, if we weren't in the program, could've asked you if you swung that way. Then I thought we never would've met, never worked together."  
  
That was a risk too far. So he kept his head down and eyes forward and kept his thirty years with Reyes and against Reyes, and if it wasn't enough, at least it was. Jack knew he had to finish the confession now, though his voice was rough as he peeled the last of it out unwillingly.  
  
"So that's that. I wasn't gonna let anyone else touch you. Not now."  
  
This, at last, brought a reaction: Reaper's masked face inclined to him. Jack pulled back and tried to answer his silent gaze, and that was when Reaper's long-fingered grey-brown hand fell lightly upon Jack's bare back, spanning him. A chill shot up his spine. As Reaper slowly searched the curve of his back the hairs prickled up on Jack's forearms.  
  
"You don't know what I look like under here."  
  
"...You want me to close my eyes?"  
  
"I'm not what I used to be."  
  
"Me neither." Jack said simply, and cupped the back of Reaper's head over his cowl. He could feel rough unnatural flesh beneath and pulled his fingers away swiftly. "Does it hurt."  
  
"No."  _Not anymore._  
  
Jack's fingers lit over him again, following the shape of his neck. Reaper could watch his expression transmute from caution to mild surprise as he felt down to the shoulders, where Reaper was still whole. His touch became firmer and more confident, and his thumbs sat in the hollows of Reaper's collarbone when he squeezed him there.  
  
"Feels good," he reported, softly. His palms flattened over his wide, strong chest and then slid down his body loosely. He picked up Reaper's free hand and brought it up to the center of his own chest once more. Something vibrant rung in his tone when he urged him, again, "Touch me."  
  
Reaper hesitated in dim silence, then stroked him from sternum to shoulder, watching Jack's skin compress tenderly under his fingertips. The crinkly grey hairs sprung back up one by one as Reaper's touch moved over them. Jack hadn't had so much hair here when he was younger, he remembered. He knew when Jack got this scar, which he followed down his body, close to his dark pink nipple.  
  
"Vientiane."  
  
"I was there. Don't you remember?" Reaper's dark, dense voice had shed some of its customary malevolence. At the edge of the city paved streets and broadband satellites could lapse abruptly into foliage at the end of any given alley. Jack, with his back braced against the sherbet orange wall of a convenience store, clutched the wound as the rain spread blood down his flank. Behind him the vivid green brush rose impermeably dense. He'd covered him, watching both ways, while Jack stripped off his gear and slapped a quik patch on himself, and Reaper could recall the pale, narrow curve of the side of his body streaked with red lacquer.  
  
Jack cocked up one side of his mouth and lifted himself against Gabriel's touch. "Glad you do."  
  
Gabriel cupped the pale, narrow curve of the side of his body and followed it down to Jack's lean hip. Jack thought maybe he'd take his hand away then, but instead, Gabriel's mask dipped; he leaned his face against Jack's shoulder and nestled his hips against Jack's.  
  
A warm feeling wrung his heart in his chest. He could feel Jack's pulse pounding through the thin membrane of his skin. Jack reached up and spread the neck of his shirt to bare the skin there and ducked to kiss it.  
  
Like a fire licks a cold log they began to explore each other. Gabriel held his mask on when Jack lifted his shirt off and touched his whole parts and the broken churn of scar tissue down his center. Jack held his breath for a long minute while Gabriel gripped his face in both hands and brought the brow of his mask to Jack's forehead. The exploring way Gabriel felt out the thick, well-muscled width of Jack's shoulders made him shiver and cup his elbow to keep him there a while, and Jack rolled up against Gabriel's hips to show him how good it felt. He felt an answering swell there. A  grin spread across his face.  
  
He pushed at the chin of the mask. "Take this off."  
  
Reaper turned away fast, biting back a hiss. But Jack got a hand on his cheek from the other side and brought him back. "Just the mask. C'mon." He could feel the pressure of Reaper's face turned against his hand. He tried again. "You can leave the hood. C'mon. Put it right back on again if you want. Just give me a chance."  
  
He felt it when Reaper relented and the tension in his neck relaxed. But he did nothing; therefore it was Jack who reached behind his head and picked open the knot in the ribbon. He pulled the mask away with one hand and cupped the side of Reaper's face - his real face - with the other.  
  
Beneath his palm, beneath the layer of black cotton, he felt a jumble of flesh, strange hollows, inconstant hardness, the stiff pillars of teeth.  
  
"Hurts?"  
  
Reaper growled, rolling his head against the hand that grasped him. He flung an insincere punch at Jack's belly, then another, then crowded up against him resentfully. "No."  
  
Jack caught both sides of his face in his hands and put his forehead against Gabriel's, who breathed hard, whose breath carried the dark grey sweetness of burnt bodies.  He felt the damaged flesh against his wrinkled brow. A mirror of Gabriel's' own tenderness.  
  
"Wish I could kiss you."  
  
"I don't have a mouth anymore."  
  
Jack winced. Then he touched the center of Gabriel's face and felt what was there: a pulpy kind of matter high up near where the bridge of his nose should be. The crispy-feeling blistering around the oral orifice. Parts of his cheeks and jaw were plainly missing. He was able to see, but did he still have eyes? Jack didn't want to check. Under there it probably all looked like the apron of meat down the center of Reyes' body. The reconstructed image of Reyes in his mind was disgusting.  
  
"If you can say 'mouth', you still have one."  
  
Gabriel twitched and hesitated before he tilted forward his bony jaw. The mass around his mouth met Jack's pink, worn-soft lips and Jack shuddered instinctively. But he stayed there, slowly moving his mouth against Gabriel's through its veil, sharing his living moisture with the sere undead.  
  
"Yeah." Jack said against the place where Gabriel's lips should have been. A pang burnt his heart: if he'd just done this twenty years ago, if he'd cupped Gabe's severe and handsome face like this, if he'd kissed him back then when his lips were still dark, humid, and plush, what would he have lost. He was late, this was all late.    
  
Gabriel leaned into his hands, and his weight felt good. He slid his arms around Jack's waist and brought them chest to chest again; he could feel the heat rolling off Jack's body, the plump, hard weight of him. He bent his head again and moved his mouth against Jack's shoulder, brought a hand up to his breast to find his nipple and rub his too-smooth thumb against it.  
  
"You punched the shit outta me," Jack murmured, dipping his chin to Gabriel's ear. "You're lucky I want you so much."  
  
Gabriel's soft huffing laugh made him feel light and satisfied. It was getting easier to touch him. Gabe was getting handsy now with his palms around Jack's ass and a thigh wedging its way between Jack's own. Jack rocked against him. He liked to be groped and he liked Gabe's legs.  
  
Suddenly Gabriel fit his hands between them and pushed them down Jack's hard stomach and into his loose sweatpants. The fabric runched around his wrists as he gripped his hips and wrapped around him to grab his firm ass. Jack chuckled and went for Gabriel's belt. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." His mouth arched up beneath the cowl. "Wanna feel you, boy scout."  
   
Gabe dragged his dick out of his shorts clumsily. Jack was a little more careful than him, cupping it protectively in his palm and drawing it out with sensual relish. He looked down at the two of them, though it was so dim he could hardly see the color: his own dark red shaft thickening against Gabe's wrist, Gabe's purplish-grey dick, with its surprisingly wide head swollen beneath a long foreskin that was still rumpled at the tip like a mouth pursed for a kiss. They looked good together, nearly the same length. Gabe glanced at him; he'd been checking them out too, with one hand clinging to the back of Jack's neck.  
  
"This what you like."  
  
Jack guided his hand around the two of them. "Yeah."  
  
Hesitantly, Gabe aligned them, pushing Jack's dick with its strong upward curve against his own. It was boiling hot against his skin, hard, humid. Touching it against his own sent a shock of pleasure down his spine. His breath hitched. His fingers tightened at Jack's neck. He began to stroke them together in his cool grey hand.  
  
Jack groaned  and wrapped a hand around his hip. He arched into Gabe's grip, slow like Gabe was slow. "That's good."  
  
Gabe didn't answer. If he followed a little late on the rock of Jack's hips he could glide the whole length of his cock against Jack's, feeling his heat and pulse beat through the thin skin. Easy. Jack closed his eyes. The hand at Gabe's hip urged him on.  
  
"You really like this." Gabe finally said, airlessly.  
  
"Yeah." Jack's hand painted down his chest, keeping away from the raw wound in the center. He cupped Gabe's nipple, ran a hand around to his back and held him, loosely. He was breathing controlled and intentionally. Something about him like this was vulnerable. The thin light from the bathroom hung in the crags and wrinkles of his face and crept over his pink lips. They were parted slightly, as if a kiss was about to come.  
  
Gabe released them. "Take over." Jack did without much of a quarrel. Gabe was preoccupied with touching Jack's mouth now. He ran his fingers over his thin lips, and Jack pulled his head back and caught the tips in his mouth. He sucked at Gabe. His hot tongue curled around and between his fingers. He wasn't paying enough attention to jacking them off, as a result, and his hand was nearly still where he gathered Gabe's cool, thick erection against his own.  
   
"Come on." Gabe muttered, dazzled. He pulled his wet fingers out of Jack's mouth and grabbed them again, overlapping Jack's hand. They moved against each other, more focused now. A licking desire built up in Gabe's chest that he'd forgotten how to feel. Jack laid a heavy weight on his own heart and tried to stay cool, so he wouldn't do what he wanted to do, which was slam Gabriel up against the wall and make him come. He bucked into their clasped hands and the sticky cling of flesh frustrated him.  
  
"You gonna be okay?"  
  
Jack panted and pushed himself flush with the edge of Gabe's palm. "Depends." His mind boiled with images of Gabriel whole and clean, naked beneath him and above him. Gabe in agony from being pushed too far. Gabe groaning in pleasure. Gabe's plush mouth wrapped around his cock. Gabe's thighs clamped on his cheeks.  
  
"Close already?" There was something mocking in it, but also something wondering.  
  
"Think I might be." Jack admitted.  
  
"Jack..."  
  
Jack swore quietly and broke his grip and gathered Gabe up in his arms, pressing his straining hard-on against his belly. "Yeah. Guess we better get to the lab."


	2. Chapter 2

The lab was in the lower level. They got back in their clothes and took the stairs; Jack was painfully conscious of how quickly distance crept back in between them, could feel it like a physical force, and tried to bridge it with a hand at Gabe's back. It wasn't enough. Gabriel was already closing his focus just to the task at hand. Jack could feel it. Gabriel could feel it too, and it was irritating to have to deal with Jack's mawkish fondling. But the chill that spread when he let go was also irritating. Every step shook him. A grey dread welled up where lust had been.

The steel doors swung open to a wide, well-lit operating room. There were so many tall swing-arm robotic assistors, their limbs hung with bags and tubes, equipped with needles, probes, lights, trays of instruments prepared and sterilized for use by slim and accurate robotic fingers, that they nearly blocked the bed. Angela had done everything possible to make this comfortable: the bed was an adjustable hospital bed with a swing pivot on one side like a fragment of a gigantic wheel, but it had been dressed with very fine white cotton sheets, blankets in a neutral beige stripe with satiny hems, more pillows than was strictly necessary, along with a few stiff foam wedges that might support bodyweight placed in unusual positions. Other necessities had been included in the tote sack which dangled off one edge, beaming "Thank God It's Friday" to the world in cheerful block letters.

Angela was waiting for them. They were late; Jack shrugged in a  _what can you do?_  way and stood close to Gabriel. Gabriel faced her as if she was a commanding officer, straight, tall, and square, with his hands in fists at his side. He wasn't wearing the mask.

She struggled not to smile at this. Gabriel was the difficult one here, and his mindset was absolutely critical to the proceedings. She stifled her excitement and explained as plainly as possible.

"We are somewhat behind schedule. Gabriel, if you would please strip down. Jack -"

Gabriel interrupted. "No."

They both looked at him. He cleared his throat and nodded at Jack. "He doesn't know what I look like under here."

"Gabe, whatever it is, it's ok —" Jack started. Angela spoke at the same time, "Nevertheless, we must —"

"Jack." Gabriel faced him. Jack's  perplexed face gave away more than he knew, and Gabe felt obligated to cup his cheek in one hand. "Trust me. I know what you're thinking. I always do." For once he could say it without bitterness. "You're not ready for this."

"What do you propose?" Angela asked. There was tension in her tone, though she was doing a fair job of managing it.

"Just make it so he can't see." From the hallway he could trust, now, that everything else was alright with Jack. He rubbed his thumb along the rise of Jack's cheekbone and felt how closely he'd shaved.

"Well how're you going to do that?" protested Jack, pulling away.

"If you think I have some sort of magic eyedrops..." Her annoyance was now somewhat clearer.

They fell collectively silent.

"Just blindfold me. God damn, it won't be the first time." Jack snapped. This got a raised eyebrow out of Angela, and, after the realization sunk in, a dark laugh from Gabriel.

"I will see what I can do. Until then - Jack, you do not have any  _additional_  objections to preparing yourself?"

"I'm all out." He grunted, and hauled his shirt off his back.

By the time Angela returned, Jack was buck naked and standing barefoot on his own discarded shirt. "The floor's cold," He explained.

Gabriel was leaning against the wall nearby, unreadable in his cowl.

Angela produced a length of black fabric from the pocket of her white coat. She fluttered to a stop just short of them. "...Jack, what is this redness here? Looks aggravated..." She gestured at his abdomen, where a bloom was slowly darkening into bruises.

"Nothing, Angie. Sparring." Gabe volunteered nothing more.

"Hmm." She disapproved. But continued, "Here we are. I recommend that you tie the knot on the side."

"Thanks." Jack reached for it, but Gabe peeled himself off the wall and strode forward.

"Let me do it." In answer to Jack's apprehensive glance, he explained, "You'll fuck it up."

Angela stepped away. Gabriel positioned himself before Jack; together they looked at what she'd brought them. It was perhaps two feet long and eight inches broad. The weave was dense and thick - when Gabriel held it up to the light, briefly, almost nothing came through. It dawned on him that it was purpose-made. He nodded. Jack had some small smile on his face, and his back was drawn up, his eyes bright in the chilly room.

Gabriel put a hand under Jack's chin and lifted it so he was facing straight ahead. The band was still warm from Angela's hand; Gabriel carefully folded it in half along its breadth and smoothed it over Jack's eyes. It tented over the strong bridge of his nose. Then Gabe reached around his head and brought the long end about, pulling it snug just over Jack's ear. A sense of relaxation and order blew up in Gabriel's mind like cinders.

He appeared to know instinctively how tight would be too tight. As he tied the knot Jack realized that it was comfortable, almost like his visor. He stood silent under Gabe's touch. Sounds seemed louder now. He felt the chill on his nakedness more. Unconsciously, he frowned.

"Can you see anything."

"No." He spoke quietly and didn't know why. "Nothing."

"You're sure?"

"Don't be an asshole." Instantly, Jack grew apologetic. "No, I can't see anything."

"Alright, Doc." Jack heard the swiping and rustling sounds of Gabriel undressing. His long bare body in the bright light, the wound on his breast, the mess under the mask, it was all out there, and Jack couldn't see it. He felt suspended. A hand touched his shoulder, large, and cool. Gabriel.

"Don't touch my face."

"Whatever you say." He was tense and breathless.

Gabriel hesitated, then pressed Jack, then thought better of it and slipped down his arm to take his hand. "Over here."

The position had already been decided by the necessity of exposing Gabriel's full head and arms. They would be denied the easy access to the femoral artery perforce, but Angela had identified another site, although, she had said apologetically, it would probably feel very strange. Gabriel led him to the bed, and Jack followed, hand in hand.

"Here," Gabe said, taking him by the shoulders and guiding him back against the edge of the bed. Jack hopped up on it, pulling his flaccid junk out of the way when he swung his legs up and onto the blankets. He scootched against the elevated back rest. Gabe touched the side of his blindfold to check that it was still fixed. Then he climbed on too.

Jack kept still while Gabriel got on top of him, his knees on either side of Jack's hips. He was too far back. It wouldn't matter yet. In the scuffle he had leaned low over Jack; Jack had smelled him, or smelled the juniper, and a faint undertone of rot. He felt the nearness of his body. His face couldn't have been more than a few inches away.

"Ow," Gabe complained. His bodyweight hitched above Jack.

"Hold still." Said Angela.

"How many of those are there?"

"Fourteen more to go, I'm afraid."

Jack interrupted. "What's happening?"

"Nothing." Said Gabe. "We are fixing the sensors on his face and head." Said Angela. She could not say "scalp", because he didn't have one. Jack rested his hands on the tops of Gabe's thighs, trying to be reassuring, or something. But he was anxious. They both were, and his heart thrummed loud in his throat because of it.

"Thought he had a neuro port."

"That is for chemical readings. This is for electrical ones." Jack felt Gabe flinch again beneath his hands. "Sorry. I know this is difficult."

"Ow."

She sounded testy when she answered this. "You know, I am considered among the best in the world at this. But it is going to sting sometimes."

Gabriel said nothing. Jack couldn't see him, but he knew the old Gabe, and how the old Gabe enjoyed provoking nurses, and he wondered whether his old friend and enemy was being real serious. How much more fun he would have had messing with one of thegreatest doctors to ever lift a syringe, one who was, to boot, once completely starstruck by him. Did Reaper still tell jokes?

The sensors took several minutes. There were other hook-ups too, Jack knew. They'd connect to the neuro port in Gabe's skull, put a few more sensors over his body, and touch the target sites for the injections with a fluorescent ink so the robots would locate them accurately. There were two on Gabe's arms, another two on his neck, one in his spine, and two in the hollows of his thighs, reachable only because he was spread so wide over Jack, where the skin was thin and his soft genitals had to be pulled aside to put down the ink. The leads for all of Gabriel's lines and feeds were all gathered into the ring of a swivel arm overhead; while he had to be in a set position at the critical moment, he would have relative liberty to move prior to that, as long as he didn't do so too quickly.

"Your turn, Jack." He felt her warm hand upon his arm, and rolled it outward for her. The cold sting of an alcohol pad was followed by a needle, which hurt, but it was done so swiftly and steadily that he hardly had time to complain. He was being hooked up to an IV drip. A pair of broad paper pads holding sensors were applied to his chest, cool with gel. Angela had explained this before: he would undoubtedly be affected by what would happen. They needed to keep an eye on his reactions nearly as they did Gabriel's. The last piece of this was Angela's small, strong fingers gently lifting his penis and testicles up, and wrapping them in a stiff cloth-like band, once around the root of the entire works, and then another loop just at the base of his penis.

"Hey, watch it. I need those."

She made an impatient sound. Gabriel's soft huffing laugh came back.

It was a penile plethysmometer with a variable restrictor; in other words, a cock ring that knew exactly how aroused he was or wasn't. He would be relieved of the burden of having to maintain erection, or that was one way to look at it, anyway. Angela could tighten the vice as soon as she didn't like the readout. He shivered.

"When did you take the pills?"

"I didn't."

"Jack!"

Above him, Gabe shifted again. Jack could feel the tension in his legs.

"I don't need 'em."

"...This is no time to indulge your pride! I'm going to go get a dose right now. I will push this all back if we have to — "

"Angela," He tried to calm down and come off his defensive cliff. "We tried it out in the hall. Everything's working. All natural."

She was absolutely silent for a long time. Jack could hardly hear her breathing. Gabe leaned back on his heels.

"All right." She said, with clipped, hard consonants. "But I will take steps if necessary."

Jack shrugged.

"You're all set. There are creme and gel lubricants in the bag. I have included condoms as well. It's up to you."

"Anything else?" Said Jack, with a thick slathering of sarcasm.

"Actually, yes. There's a vibrator and handcuffs. I would have included the blindfold if I had thought of it. Good luck, gentlemen. We'll be watching over you from the booth."

He heard her heels clicking away. Gabe leaned over him to grab the bag and rifle through it urgently.

"Well?"

"No handcuffs."

Jack chuckled under his breath and ran his hands up Gabe's big, hard thighs. "Think she's mad at us."

Gabe didn't respond to that at first. He rested his hands on Jack's chest, careful about the sensors, then pulled back.

"You ok?"

"Nn."

Jack thought for a moment, then flopped around on the bed in search of Gabe's hands. He found one, then the other, and took them in his own, rubbing his palms with his thumbs. "Probably easier with the blindfold. Can't see anything, only feel you." He brought Gabe's hands back to his chest and laid them there, covering them. He took a deep breath and his chest lifted under Gabe's touch. "Just pretend we're back out in the hall."

Gabriel looked down at him silently. Jack's pale head wrapped in black and his pink mouth open. Jack's wide shoulders on the bed. His nipples were erect and gooseflesh prickled on his upper arms, but he was quiescent beneath Gabriel's body, naked but relaxed. He knew what they had to do. An unfamiliar taste of salt built in the back of his throat, and it took all his focus to hold his corporeal form. It would have been so easy to slip the mortal coil, descend into dust, and sail on out the door. He hesitated, and beneath him Jack exhaled slowly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: body horror, medical procedures, might or might not be torture.

Reyes could see what Jack couldn’t: they were perched awkwardly on a hospital bed under broad multilight lamps – dimmed for now, ominous and mushroomlike above them. They were surrounded on all sides by machines which stood waiting, with purring actuators, with long beige cables that snaked out to the sides of the room. Above them and behind, the wide panel of mirrored windows shielding the observation room loomed. He was out of his armor, out of his clothing, unarmed, his face bare and the clinical air cold on it in a way that left him with the distantly-remembered sensation of the wetness of wounds.

And beneath him was Jack Morrison with his eyes covered and his pink mouth ajar. He had his hands on the tops of Reyes’ thighs still, but he wasn’t moving. Reyes couldn’t not see the IV lead taped onto his arm, penetrating it. Beneath the tape was veiled a little spurt of red, somehow more cold and unnerving than the 20-odd leads dangling out of his own head, neck, and spine.

How many times had he aimed a gun at Morrison. Why was the red dot and the faint cupric smell of blood serum putting a chill in him in a way he’d never felt when pumping Morrison’s immediate vicinity with bullets. He’d drawn his blood before. They’d fought, even before Switzerland.

The pink mouth moved. “Hey…” He sounded uncertain.

“Shut up.”

Jack shut up. He plucked his hands up off the hard, smooth tops of Reyes’ thighs and put them out to the sides.

Reyes grabbed the side of his face and shoved his chin back, exposing his long, thick neck. Jack pulled in a slow breath, consciously relaxing. Reyes’ legs cupped his sides. Reyes’ cock and balls were resting coolly on the lowest part of his belly. He wasn’t as heavy as Jack thought he was going to be.

“You’re just gonna lie there?”

The response came after too long a pause. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

Reyes hissed and let him go, rubbing Jack’s throat as he retreated. Then restlessly he wrapped a hand around it and squeezed.

Jack put a hand on his wrist but didn’t pull him away. Reyes tightened down, and Jack rolled uncomfortably at the bite of his powerful grip digging in.

“You think I like this, huh?”

Jack said nothing, but gripped his wrist tighter.

“You think I couldn’t just kill you right now?” He racheted down on Jack and felt the strong cords of his throat tighten and throb as he tried to swallow.

“Gabe.” He pulled at Reyes’ hand now, not so much trying to get him off as trying to ease him up. It was hard to inhale; he felt a cold chill down his spine at the thought that this could fall apart so easily. “I don’t know what to say…You—“ It was hard to continue. “I don’t know what you want.  _Jesus Christ_ …”

Gabriel searched his blindfolded face. He was slowly turning red, both hands pushing at the arm choking him, the transparent IV cable shining and trembling. But he wasn’t fighting hard enough to win.

The faint buzz of the intercom broke the silent struggle. No-one spoke; there was only the faint click and hum of the thing being turned on.

“You motherfucker.” Reyes hissed, abruptly letting him go. The needles in his skull pricked pain into his senses as he jerked back on his heels. “Let’s just get this over with.”

_When this is over, I hope I’m there when you wake up, because I’m going to be first in line to beat the shit out of you._ That’s what Jack wanted to say. He seethed silently beneath Reyes.

“I’m not gonna start.” Jack muttered. “Not after that stunt.” Then, just as quickly, he flexed a fist and threw a hand over his eyes to rub his brow. “Just…”

He couldn’t see anything. Reyes wasn’t going to flirt and fondle, not in the mood he was in. Angela was probably pissed off too, considering. In a cold room, under a cold killer, under pressure, he had to produce somehow.

“Just… can you turn around? Gimme your ass. I’ll get you ready—“

Reyes snapped, “I’ll take care of that.”

That was enough. Jack curled up under him, sneering, and grabbed his arms blindly. “Listen, you asshole, you’re not gonna believe this, but I’m having a little trouble getting it up. You gonna give me a lap dance, huh? You gonna coo in my ear?”

Reyes was silent, though his arms tensed under Jack’s grasp. Jack continued. “That’s what I thought.”

He laid back, releasing Reyes, who in turn sat back on him heavily. Nothing happened. Just when Jack was getting into that stage of doubt where the needle pricks inward, Reyes moved, and his weight left. Then he clambered heavily around. Jack felt him spread his legs back over him and felt the knobbly complex shapes of Reyes’ feet just under his arms, felt the round contour of his ass gradually drop into place over his solar plexus.

He couldn’t see Reyes’ head dropped, like he was trying to hide behind his own shoulders.

“Should’ve taken the pills,” He said in a low, angry voice.

It took a lot of self-control to not make some smartass remark at this point.  _Should’ve kept your hands off my throat._ Jack just said, “Sorry.” He re-centered himself. He ticked through the mental list of reasons he was doing this. He thought about Ana waiting upstairs; that was slightly more motivating.

He laid his hands on the outsides of Reyes’ thighs. His skin was cool to the touch and clammy in a peculiar way, like the oily sweat on the pads of fingertips. He was smooth; Jack realized he was hairless here, and wondered if Reyes had hairy calves. No; he would’ve felt it when they were changing positions. He didn’t. His chest had been hairless too, come to think of it. What there was of it. Did Reyes shave?

He followed the thick sweep of his thighs up to his hips, which were substantial, with shallow dents that Jack traced to his ass. Reyes felt good, despite the clamminess. Solid, resilient beneath his touch. Too bad he was just sitting there like a lump. He got both cheeks in his palms and squeezed; they were harder to squeeze, like the skin was thicker than normal, but the shape was good. Then instead of fucking around any further there he reached up and painted the slope of his back. Reyes looked good from the back, Jack knew it from memory, with his wide shoulders tapering down into defined, graceful musculature, the kind of long lines that spoke of speed and power. He could feel those muscles tense and relax now – almost too quickly, there, like a twitch, when he reached the small of Reyes’ back. He tried it again, rubbing with his thumbs. Reyes squirmed a little on top of him.

_He’s sensitive there._  Jack wanted to smile about it but it was impossible to tell if it was sensitive in the good way or in the bad way.

He didn’t know whether to say anything or not. Didn’t know what would make it easier for Reyes. Didn’t know whether making it easier was the point or not. All those times Angela asked him if he had any questions, and he never came up with anything.

He got both hands around Reyes’ ass again and kneaded it, enjoying its fullness, even the hard feel. With his thumbs he parted the cheeks, gentle at first, and then when there was no response he pulled wider. Reyes lifted off him a little. There was no smell and little heat. Jack fit a thumb in there and traced the inner crease down from tailbone to hole, and Reyes sucked in some air.

Reyes’ butthole was weird. What Jack was used to was something0 slightly longer than wide, and ringed with a little pout of firm, sensitive, rumpled skin which runched quickly on tight little muscles. This was smooth, flat, and maybe it was just that his hands weren’t sensitive enough to tell him anymore, but it felt more like a hole splitting in a sheet of gelatin than a body reacting. It didn’t move much under his touch, but as Jack rubbed there gently, Reyes squirmed again, then clamped down on Jack’s ankle with a powerful grip.

“Too much?” He asked quickly.

“Just get it over with,” Reyes hissed.

“You okay?” Just as he heard the building bile of an incoming response, he cut him off. “Forget I asked. Hold on.”

He fumbled for the tote bag. Reyes released his ankle and sat back; Jack could feel him turn. There were several tubes and bottles in there… which was which. Shit. He could peel the blindfold up enough to see, or…

“Gimme that.” Reyes dragged the bag out of his hands. A few seconds later, he dropped something chilly on Jack’s chest. An ovoid bottle with a flip cap. When Jack opened it and squirted a little of the contents on his fingers, he found it was the thick silicone lubricant, which thinned as it warmed in his hands. It was scented: cinnamon, or the petrochemically durable synthetic equivalent.

Reyes braced himself with a hand on Jack’s ankle again.

“Thanks.” Said Jack, and felt for him with his dry hand. Reyes’ ass was hovering above his stomach. Jack found his hole again and smeared a healthy layer of lube over him there. Reyes was so smooth back here. Jack had been thinking about this a long time, but never like this. Never thought it would happen like this. Never thought it would happen at all.

He didn’t realize he was holding back until Reyes growled, “What are you waiting for?”

“Sorry.”

Holding Reyes’ hip in one hand, he fit the tip of his index finger against his entrance and pushed in carefully. He felt the smooth, flat opening part for him in a way that was unlike the autonomic clench of a normal ass, but that uncanny sensation quickly became irrelevant when he felt what was inside him.

Inside Reyes was a morass. Instead of a hot, tight sheath clenching at his fingers he felt an indeterminate pudding of forms, a slippery, gripping complexity shot through with what felt like tubelets or cords, nodules, lobes, all suspended in some thick matter that clung to him and resisted his intrusion and flexed around him in fluid motion, now gelatinous, now slick, now like mud. It was like trying to tear a hand through an overripe pumpkin. It was like pushing fingers into a shotgun wound. It was like pushing fingers into a shotgun wound that tried to push the fingers back out.

Jack caught his frightened bark before it came out of his mouth, but he also pulled out of Reyes and flattened back against the bed and sucked in a breath between his teeth. He held Reyes’ calves. They were reassuringly normal, aside from being hairless. He could feel the familiar shape of muscles and skin, heavy bones, nice human proportions.

_What the hell was that_.

“What is it.” Reyes said. He sounded less pissy. If Jack didn’t know any better he would’ve thought there was an uncertainty there. He thought fast.

“Just… overwhelmed.”

He would have to go back in there. Christ, he would have to put his dick in there. He gritted his teeth.

“We’re wasting time.”

“I know that.” Jack spat back. He spread Reyes and briskly pushed in two fingers before he lost momentum.  If it hurt, Reyes didn’t say anything. The tender, grainy mess inside of him didn’t respond either way; it churned and sucked at Jack like a pitcher full of shucked oysters and all their tiny pearls. Jack closed his eyes beneath the blindfold for the first time and tried to think of the old Reyes, the handsome asshole, the guy he’d watched in the showers, the man who’d saved his life, the man in his fantasy with his knees up over his shoulders and his dark face turned against the white pillow…

Gabriel Reyes saw it before he felt it: the first twitch of Jack’s dick. He was staring down at nothing in particular, determined, just waiting for Jack to get ready and get it over with. The fingers in his ass were too weird and unfamiliar to be exciting; the sensation was so strong it shot overhead. It was something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Jack’s fingers were inside him, messing around with his insides. And below him, Jack’s dick started to thicken and lift in its black collar.

It soothed something in him. Gabriel hated feeling it.

He knew Jack had been watching him for a long time. He’d felt his eyes on his back, knew which way Jack swung, knew from the kind of guys Jack would go for that he was – he used to be – squarely in Jack’s strike zone. He liked men of a similar age, similar build, he liked darker skin, he liked military guys and sparring. He’d been so clear about “ _I don’t date same team”_ that it headed off most of the unease, but the air was never really clear between them. And they’d been close, back then. Comrades, defenders, bullet for bullet, scar for scar. Reyes had thought, more than once, whether he was the type of guy Jack liked, or whether Jack liked the kind of guys Jack liked because he couldn’t go for Reyes. And Gabriel himself preferred women, which Jack couldn’t have missed.He wasn’t the kind of guy who had to spend the night alone if he didn’t feel like it; girls liked his hard body, women loved his international polish and his sly sense of humor.  Not that he was blind to the charms of male attention; once in a while, he’d go with some slim dark-eyed artist and do some nude posing and get his dick sucked – it was flattering. Just not his first pick.

He’d never gone after a big guy like Jack. Touching him out in the hallway had been unreal, like touching a memory. Seeing his dick had been weird. He was warm, in more ways than one. Strong in a way that got under Reyes’ skin. He was hungry and physical but kept himself on a leash, and that kind of control did something to Reyes. For a moment he’d felt opportunistic, like getting closer to Jack was literally getting closer to a channel of vitality. He wanted to push him and see if he’d lose control. He wanted to see how far Jack would go. Jack still wanted him the way he wanted him in the past.  _How could he._

He stroked a hand up the pale inside of Jack’s thigh. Beneath him, Jack groaned , and scissored his fingers inside him. Gabriel winced and pushed back against him automatically.

Something about him, something about them, together, in spite of this room, in spite of this situation: Gabriel couldn’t name it but he could feel its walls around him, standing between them and the observation window, standing between them and the procedure to come, keeping in some sunken warmth. It pissed him off. Why did it have to be Morrison.

But it was Morrison. His cool fingers curled around Jack’s dick. He let it rifle through his grip and felt Jack’s quick pulse leap against his palm. His skin was hot and slightly humid. Gabriel could smell him even over the fake cinnamon, the smell of clean sweat and salt and his smoky, faintly acrid musk. He stroked him a few times and angled his growing hard-on up so it would curve near his own flaccid dick. The one felt so hot against the other. The swell of arousal took him by surprise.

“Keep doing that.” Jack muttered from behind him.

He did, from the thick base of his shaft to the obscene blunt red tip. Just like out in the hallway, a coil unwound in his thoughts, a sense of deep relaxation crept over him. The idea came to him so gradually it felt like someone else had signed him up for it a while ago but the more he looked at Jack’s dick, the more he felt its heat and its thickness in his hand, the more he thought about it against his tongue, pressing against his palate, a fantasy of it bumping against the back of his throat.

He stroked Jack more, the way he liked to be stroked off himself: firm, steady, no fucking around. He felt his palm stretch around Jack’s width. They fit together here. . Jack’s hand pushing inside him was starting to feel less foreign and stiff, filling him and pulling out in time with the hand on his dick. He was mauling Reyes’ thigh, starting to urge him back every time he pushed in.

This was about turning Jack on, wasn’t it.

“You like that?”

“Yeah.” Jack ran a hand up Gabriel’s back almost affectionately. He pushed at his shoulders. “More.”

To Jack’s surprise, maybe also to Gabriel’s surprise, he went with the push and dipped low over Jack’s body. When he slithered back, he let Jack’s dick ride against his bare body. His head dropped, his cool ashy breath filled the gap between Jack’s thighs.

“Holy shit.” Said Jack between his teeth. “Oh my god.” Gabriel heard his head smack back against the pillows and once again his mouth tried to make the unfamiliar shape of a smile.

“You want me to?” Gabriel said, low, forgetting for a moment, his mouth so close to Jack’s shaft that he could feel its humidity on his cheek.

“Shit, Gabe.” He pawed at Gabe’s ass, trying to push him onto his dick.

Gabe ducked and ran his tongue along the whole length of him, and Jack moaned beautifully for him. Then he took the tip in his mouth, between the dry, aggravated masses of scabs that formed his lips, and tried to suck him. Jack felt a foreign mass enclose him, and the cool air of the room through some wet gape in the side of Gabriel’s face.

In the observation room Maucombe hit Dr. Zeigler’s arm, jarring her out of her attempt to read the strange signals coming out on Gabriel’s neuro port feed. “Morrison’s in trouble.”

“What? What’s wrong?” She cried, alarmed and on her feet at once.

Maucombe shoved the output monitor in her hands. Morrison’s heart rate was in the triple digits. The flaring EKG reading indicated extreme distress, and the penile monitor’s graph was showing rapid de-escalation in a malevolent violet line descending from a high peak. Frighteningly the audio feed from the room showed total silence. She looked out the window and startled. There was no time to waste.

“Nail him. Immediately! I want 60 miligrams of enrogafil and an adrenal stabilizer. Don’t let him lose it!”

Maucombe and Bagshawe scrambled at the controls, feeding the order to the robots. If Bagshawe raised an eyebrow at the dosage, he kept his mouth shut and hit the confirmation anyway. A pale yellow liquid dripped into Jack’s IV feed. A long beige arm extended towards him, bearing an injector, and it nailed him in the meat of his shoulder almost before he heard it coming. The EKG flared again. Angela bit her clenched fist and silently hated Jack’s pride. And Gabriel was already noticing: the monitors showed the sharp twist in his mood, a spike of anger, or fear, a toxic drip as he felt Jack’s dick soften. She had to think of something, and fast.

Her voice trembled only a little when she came onto the intercom. Even as she spoke she was dialing up a cocktail of controls for Jack:  relaxers, stimulants, sensitizers. He had to stay with them. He had to stay with Gabriel.

“Jack… Gabriel. I am sorry to interrupt you. We need to move to the next stage. If you can oblige us?”

Gabriel lifted his head to try to glare at the window. Jack, on the other hand, covered his face with both hands and tried to hold back a sob of relief. Angela had taken over, just as she promised. She must have stuck him with something advanced, because his flagging boner was coming back with a fierce vengeance and the edge of horror was being gradually filed off his mind like someone lifting a knife from his neck. His heart was slowing. A chemical relaxation flooded his chest and it left him lightheaded.

He didn’t hide his strain as well when he touched Gabriel’s back again and said, “Come on. I’m ready. Let’s not keep ‘em waiting.”

Gabriel grunted and looked down at him: Jack was hard in his hand, hot and as big as he had been out in the hall. A cold feeling melted in the back of his throat. He gave him a last rub, smearing his too-thick spittle along Jack’s length, and came around. The leads in their loop turned with him, orchestrated by motion detectors that could disconnect and reconnect him to new attachment points in the robotic head above almost instantaneously. The harmonious clicking followed him as he spread back over Jack. Jack held his waist, massaging him, wishing he could see the old Gabe on top of him like this. He’d sit so tall, his abs tight, showing off. What would his face look like: proud, smirking, knowing he’d gotten to Jack. Beautiful like one of those old statues, warm as a summer night.

“Condom.” He said. “I can do it if—“

“I’ll do it.”

Just like that Jack gave up another old fantasy. He would have said, if Gabe asked, that he didn’t want to mess with adding any foreign biomaterial to the mix. That’s what he would have said instead of the truth. But Gabe didn’t ask.

Gabe rolled the condom onto him and lubed it up with no sensuality. He held himself above Jack with an empty mind and a half-hard dick, not knowing what he should be feeling right now. Jack held him lightly, steadying him, but ready to move away if he was told to. It wasn’t hard at all to get him in; he just slid home into his slick hole. Gabe set both his broad palms on Jack’s chest.

Jack was inside him. When he looked at Jack’s face he saw how staggered he was; his mouth was open, his face flushed. His neck was flushed. Clear down to his chest, where it spread beneath Gabe’s hands. Gabe could feel him lodged deep in his body, radiantly hot. Could feel his insides enclose Jack and hold him. He felt a building weakness, trembling, like he was struck with a fever.

“You feel me?” Jack murmured.

“…Yeah.”

“Does it hurt.”

“No.”

“You wanna…” Jack’s hands tightened at his waist. He wet his lips. “…Move?”

“Yeah. Morrison…” He hitched up cautiously and sank back down. A soft sound burbled out of his maw.

“What?” Jack was steady beneath him, just following his movement.

“Ah, shit.” Gabe hissed. He couldn’t say anything more.

Jack let him find his own pace, which was gradual at first, awkwardly hitching himself up Jack’s shaft and easing back down again. When he started to get into it he didn’t move faster, but heavier, pushing back onto him harder, feeling the thick pulse push inside of him. Harder felt better. Jack started to grunt at the bottom of each stroke as Gabe’s weight smacked him.

Angela had pumped him so full of who knows what that Jack couldn’t possibly figure out whether or not he liked this or wanted it anymore. His dick was painfully hard and even through the condom he could feel the bizarre fleshy mass inside Gabriel, could feel itopening around him, could feel himself pushing through knots of nodules as thin cables snaked around him or dissolved into pebbly nothing swept away on a tide of lukewarm fluid, could feel channels left in him, like Gabe’s body had formed precisely around him, and then on the next stroke these would be gone and replaced with some heavy swirling gel-like substance.

He was never going to have a fuck like this again. Never again like this, never again with Gabriel. His one shot.

“You feel good,” He said. “Keep going.” He petted him, covered his hands, peeled one away and brought it to his face. Gabe traced his mouth again and then slipped a thumb in, and Jack sucked at him, his head tilted back against the pillow. He groaned.

Gabe felt the sound in his chest and couldn’t look away from Jack’s mouth. It would have been so easy and natural to let the vibration funnel out of him, turn his flesh to black milk, lose this form, cover Jack. It would be so easy to dissolve and devour him, to feel his whole hot body drive out his cold from inside. He wanted more than this could give him. Unconsciously the mass inside him roiled and closed around Jack, seeking fullness, wanting each stroke to split him open.

Jack swore and pulled Gabriel’s hand away from his mouth. “Too tight.” He hissed.

Chastened, Gabe leaned back. His body reoriented itself. A sense of danger: he’d almost lost it there. They’d almost lost it there. He tried to relax his ass and Jack sighed with relief immediately.

His big, warm hand closed around Gabe’s dick. It was still slightly slippery with lube, sliding easily over him. Gabe hissed at the shock of pleasure and put his hands back behind him, on Jack’s thighs, presenting himself.

“Do it,” He said.

Jack grinned, and it pulled on something deep in Gabe’s mind. He arched into Jack’s touch, encouraging him. “Harder,” He said in a close whisper. “Do it…” Jack got both hands on him then, one pulling down his foreskin with delicate skill, and the other – Jack spat in his palm and swirled it around the bare head. Gabe swallowed a shout and pushed up into his hands, his un-mouth wide and his tongue lolling.

In the observation room, Bagshawe was glued to the readouts. Maucombe was rechecking the long script of automated procedures that would launch in stages: the plasticizer, then the synthetic protein transcribers, billions of them, in cohorts attuned to specific patterns of neural activity. After that would come a cascade of drugs to be administered in packages shot through Gabriel’s system. The timing was absolutely critical. They needed the moment of peak arousal, and they needed to get him into the tank instantaneously after that.

Angela was watching the men on the table. Nothing about it titillated her in the slightest; she felt, at most, a faint satisfaction that Jack had recovered in time. For now she was waiting, and weighing the options, wondering how much she was going to hurt Gabriel. Wondering how much she was going to hurt Jack. Perhaps the first time in her career that she would not be giving her human patients the comforts offered to the animal test subjects with whom she had pioneered this procedure.

“He’s close, Doctor.” Bagshawe said, the blue panel lights like moonlight on his dark face.

“Let him go.”

“Doctor?”

She responded politely but the tone of her voice made every hair on the back of Bagshawe’s neck stand up. “Please do not question me again. I need you to do what I tell you to do, exactly what I tell you to do, exactly when I tell you to do it. Is this clear, Doctor Bagshawe?”

“…Yes, crystal.”

Below, in the room, Gabriel Reyes’ head fell back. His hard dick pulsed in Jack’s hand, an internal response clawed at his insides to pull out spurts of semen that never came.

“The transcriptors. Now.”

“Angela!”

She shot him a look of pure venom and slammed the confirmation herself: phase 2 only, protein transcribers. The machines sprang to life.

The long metal arms clicked and whirred as they surrounded Gabriel's torso. A translucent fluid ran into the lines at his arms, the insides of his thighs, the back of his head, He was suspended in pleasure, barely cognizant, but the white shock of fear burst in his heart almost in time with his orgasm when he heard the sound. He tore at Jack's chest; just then a liquid fire entered his arteries, everywhere, simultaneous. As Gabriel clutched at him Jack's hands tightened at his hips - he was close, and urging Gabe on - but now all of Gabe's energy had descended into the tight black focus of pain. He sucked in a long breath between his teeth as the fire spread through him, a sensation like being torn apart, torn limb from limb, the wounds open to the air and the nerves shrieking.

A low groan built in his throat. Jack clutched him, and he tore Jack's hands away in fury at the pain. The groan became a howl; his spine taut, hard as metal, as he strained away from Jack's body - as the sensation spread to his deepest viscera he could feel individual coils of his intestines with terrible clarity, could feel them knitting and straining, could feel them as though they were pierced by innumerable needles, and began to scream.

Jack tore away the blindfold to see this: Gabriel's body seized in agony. Above a torso pulled so taut every individual muscle strained against the skin was the crown of his skinless head. His meat was a sickly reddish-grey, glistening with serous fluids, gaping at the jaw so that bones pitted with decay showed through. He was pierced with needles on long leads that danced and trembled as he shuddered. The mouth, the wound of his mouth, was formed of burnt-looking scabs that flaked away and renewed themselves. Where his eyes should have been there were two pulpy grey hollows continuously bulging and gleaming and being sucked back into the sockets - a resurrection continuously failing. Black blood spurted from the open wounds of his head and chest, pouring from his mouth, congealing into organic forms that sloughed away instantly.

At Jack’s horrified cry Gabriel panicked. His whole body formed a rictus of pain, immovable; he was seized around Jack, incapable of letting him go. Jack grabbed at his own chest – his heart felt like it was bursting – and his hand slipped in the bloody mess.

The readout monitors started to fail. Whatever was going on, it was outside all possible operating conditions. Angela shot the plasticizers into Gabriel’s system. Maucombe was already running for the door. A grey glaze swallowed Gabriel before Jack’s eyes, and Jack’s desperate, airless sobbing subsided into darkness.


	4. Several Months Earlier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: hey this is where all the non-con/child abuse/nasty shit that isn't body horror/and also some body horror happens. it is not at length (about 200 words worth) but is explicit. 
> 
> ill post a summary of this chapter at the top of the next chapter, which won't have hardly any nasty shit in it at all, so skip without hesitation.

Winston called it "Overwatch" still, and everyone else went along with that out of deference, but it was not Overwatch. To begin with, they no longer had a UN mandate; they no longer had a mandate from anyone. Their intelligence was internal, their strategy set by their own command, and their goals were made ethically but without reference to any other power.

All of this had been informal but binding up until the moment that Amélie Lacroix walked up to the gates of the Gibraltar base in broad daylight, unarmed, to have the door held open for her by Dr. Ziegler. Angela had been in contact with Sombra for months. The fact that nobody else knew about this made Amélie's incredible story more plausible, perversely. She explained: Talon had become a useful tool, corrupted from within. What had been an organization of overfunded anarchists and terrorists had fallen into discipline under the hands of a capable commander, and been provided with a mission: to exterminate Overwatch. But their information came from Sombra, and Sombra had the commander in her pocket; the commander, in turn, had Sombra in his, and he wanted revenge.

So the Overwatch agents who were "found" were the ones that the commander and Sombra together selected.

 

* * *

 

After eighteen straight days of psychological and biochemical testing, there was a final synthesis test for Gabriel to endure. The testing room was dimly lit and perhaps ten feet across, square, with a screen fore and the wide black rectangle of the observation window aft. In the middle was a very up-to-the-minute treadmill, and next to it, the tall crane of some piece of medical equipment, the oblong head and poseable arms of which gave it the appearance of some ridiculous manservant waiting at the side of its master.

Gabriel sighed and stripped off his shirt and placed himself obediently upon the treadmill. With light and skillful hands Angela fixed him piece by piece with sensors from the crane: white papery pads over his bare chest and at the base of his head, a mask over the holes of his former nose, and a long needle, not totally unlike a knitting needle, which fit into his armpit. Angela did her best to construct an over-the-shoulder harness for it out of elasticised gauze so that he wouldn't have to clench his arm to hold it there. Then, the neuro plug, which attached to the port which had already been implanted in his continuously regenerating skull. The electrical readings from the sensors would be useful, but the microscopic fibres extending from the port dock would measure neurotransmitter activity across the entire of his brain. Finally, she hooked up a line to the plug in his side that sat just above where his liver was supposed to be. Once everything was in place, she turned the machine on - it was soundless - and a few seconds later, an affirmative knock came at the window. Doctor Bagshawe was confirming that the readings were coming through as they ought.

"We should be able to hear you. If you need anything, just shout!" She cheerfully told him, with a heartening pat on his shoulder. Then she rummaged into a deep pocket on her coat and pulled out a bottle of flavored electrolyte replacement fluid. "I hope you like fruit punch!" This went into the cup holder on the bridge of the treadmill. She even twisted off the top for him.

Reyes didn't particularly care, nor did he particularly need it, though it was entertaining and disconcerting that the fabulous scent of 'fruit punch' lifted into the air from the narrow mouth of a bottle of colorless liquid. By now he had untrained the instinct to smile as a form of communication, so he touched Angela's shoulder to say thanks, and faced the screen with grim resolution.

"We'll start with some initialization screens. After that, the content algorithm will take over. Gabriel..." She got in front of him and looked up at him. Concern knit her brows. "Please don't try to — guard your reactions. We have to know what is most effective. You must trust us; we won't judge you, not at all."

He snorted and turned away, but she tiptoed over to the side so he would have to look at her still, and her wide, honest blue eyes. Her determination was clear; she wasn't going to leave without an answer.

"Don't worry about me, Doc. You'll get what you're looking for."

Angela turned to the window and waved. The screen, which took up the entire wall facing Gabriel, flickered to life: a video of a calm mountain lake on a sunny afternoon, surrounded by conifers. Beneath his feet the treadmill buzzed three times as warning, then began to move at a clip somewhat slower than his own usual walking speed. He picked up without issue.

"I'll just wait here with you for a bit. Do you like mountains? They do get you awfully high."

"You don't have to make small talk with me." He growled, irritated, although he knew her intentions.

"Well, it is a clinical sign of stroke."

"Not liking mountains?"

"An impaired sense of humor."

He would have snapped at her but instead he hissed indeterminately. This made her smile.

"We'll try the next one."

 

* * *

 

Amélie spread the list of names before them. Topi Byelobog. Seán Conchobhar. Richard Wilson. Thi Phượng Lành. Nala Mustafa. Alazne. Kester Bedwyr. Naamah Breindel. It went on. "These were your traitors." She explained flatly. These were the leaks, the corrupt agents, the ones who had sold Overwatch out to enemy forces. The traitors that Commander Morrison refused to believe existed, the ones he went to war with Reyes over. In the first file Amélie brought out - Topi's - she showed the transmission logs from Topi's Overwatch communications accounts, showing communication with both Talon and with enemy omnic forces. Dates matching battles where Topi lived and many others did not. The other files followed in the same vein: illegal bioweapons shipments smuggled in Overwatch supply drops; double agents working for national governments, who had derailed Overwatch missions to further their own geopolitical ends; monstrous abuse of power.  Gerard's name was not on the list. Of him, Amélie did not speak, and her brief frown indicated that she found the subject beyond remark.

Jack changed the subject. "So you're saying you're on our side, is that it?" They had been at it for almost five hours. The intake agents had left the matter to Jack, and Jack had brought in Ana to help him keep calm, and they had locked themselves in the small square concrete interrogation room in the basement.

"Don't be a child. This is not a business of 'sides'. We have simply provided you with a solution to a problem you refused to acknowledge." While she spoke, Ana Amari rose to unlock the security seal on the interrogation room door.

He bit back his smart-ass remark about that. "And what about this commander of yours. What's his story. Or hers." He hardly heard Ana's soft, amazed greeting in the background.

"Why don't you ask me yourself,  _Jack_."

At the low, dense growl of that voice Jack was on his feet at once and face to face with Reaper's bony mask.

"See you still know how to treat your guests."

 

* * *

 

 She raised a hand so Bagshawe would cue the next video. Reyes could see her at the edge of his vision; she was raptly watching the screen now. The mountain lake dissolved gradually into a scene of a formal summer garden suitable for a French baroque palace: low and high hedges, orderly plots of blue and white flowers arranged in circles and ringed with stone tiles, herbs, old-fashioned roses with loose cabbage-like heads. A procession began at the left side of the screen: a kingly figure in tight breeches and with a long curled wig; a full lace cravat at his throat, stuck with an enormous ruby cabochon pin. His long cloak was held up by two page boys following him. Then came what must have been the queen in her regalia, her golden hair powdered. Then courtiers in silks and velvets, then servants, children, and dogs. Gabriel found it painfully slow going and was grateful to feel the treadmill speed up slightly.

"Is this better?" Angela asked, somewhere around the queen's train.

"Doesn't matter."

"I see."

Once the dogs started to subside in a froth of coppery ears and happy barking, they were followed by lower servants. One of the servants had all of his head shaved except for a fring at the top which stuck straight up and was dyed halfway down its length: a violent fuchsia. He was wearing tight, torn modern clothing, all black and metallic. Quite unconsciously, Gabe's head slanted on his neck just a fraction, like a flinch. The procession continued. Soon after this time Angela waved her hand again.

The next scene appeared at once. A busy city street in a working class neighborhood. Shot down the length of a road, it showed streetlights and pedestrians, hovercars pulling up to the sidewalks, shops, lights in the windows of apartments, dogs and their fences, kids running after each other. The camera was so low and the buildings so high that the sky was just an orange sliver between the mews and balconies. Gabriel watched and walked; the camera moved down the street, and sensation was just a little like walking down that street, except the camera position was so low that it was like a small child's view of the city. The cars loomed large. He found that when he turned his head, the camera followed that as well. The thought occurred: why hadn't they just put him in a VR headset?

Angela would have told him, if he had asked.*  But he didn't. Another knock at the window.

"Looks like everything is working as it should. I'll leave you to it."

"Thanks." He said, injecting just enough sarcasm into it to be noticeable.

"You're welcome!"

The room lit up briefly as she opened the door onto the hallway. Then she was gone.

As Gabriel walked down the street he saw, or rather heard, at first, Reinhardt Wilhelm. The big old German was standing at the fence outside of a basketball court, wearing a Lakers tank and very European purple denim shorts, and in one immense hand he held a waffle cone stacked with a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of orange sherbet; he bellowed exhortations to the group of teens playing pick-up basketball. Gabe's mouth unconsciously formed a smile, and just as quickly a frown, because smiling was painful and he had almost rid himself of it, and he felt manipulated now, and then realized that was the point. Setting his maw closed again he walked up to Reinhardt. To his brief surprise, the simulated Reinhardt "saw" him.

"Ah! Gabriel!!" He looked delighted; even his damaged eye seemed to gleam with happiness. "Come here!! You're just in time to help me cheer them on!"

Reyes wasn't sure if he was supposed to answer. It was just a video, a simulation. He knew it would be generated on the fly from his reactions, but were they supposed to be verbal, or what?

"What's wrong?" said Reinhardt, his smile fading.

Gabriel cleared his throat and spoke. "...Nothing. How are you... Fuck." His head dropped. There was something humiliating about talking to a computer generated friend. "Fuck this." He looked back to the window, but it was black and revealed nothing.

Reinhardt looked crestfallen. Gabriel swore again and then barked, "Don't make me perform. I don't like this. Do something else."

 

*Note: It was for the clinicians, who needed to see the image and his physical reaction at the same time as the readings. While it would have been possible to record everything and review it later, this was the best way for a single observer to see the readouts from the machine, the response of his b ody, and the image all at once, and to gather a sense of time and momentum from them. They were trying to hit a moving target in the dark; this lo-fi method was superior for the purpose. The senses of the clinicians were finite.

 

* * *

 

"I'm not staying," Amélie interrupted. Reaper addressed himself to Angela, wiggling the claws of his gloves in a solemn hello.

"I'm sorry to hear that; I was hoping to catch up."

"Certainly you were." She stood up and sneered at the increasingly full room. "It is stifling.  _He_  is the one you want. My work is done here, yes, Commander?"

Jack started, but Reaper answered. "You're good. Let me know when you want to be found."

She left. And as she did so, Jack arched a brow at his old friends. "Someone mind explaining to me what's going on here?"

"We finished the list, Jack."

"What list? The - the one with all the names on it?"

"I would imagine so," murmured Amari.

Reaper nodded. "I'm coming back."

 

* * *

 

The image on the screen froze, though the treadmill continued to move. A voice piped in to the room: Angela's, somewhat hesitant. "We could try to dial it in faster. If we gave you an array of images, would you-- let me just try something."

The street vanished, along with Reinhardt and the teenagers. A flat grey faded in, then four large still images took its place: a cat, a beautiful woman, a gun, and a tropical island.

"This is more formal," Angela said through the speaker. "You might find it more comfortable. Please call out what you see."

"Cat," Gabriel began. "Island. Woman. Gun." But he recognized as soon as he did it that there was a subtle difference in tone between "island" and "gun."

"Which one do you react to the most strongly, do you think?"

"Gun."

"Is this better?"

"Yeah. For now."

"I want you to call out what you see, then at the end, repeat the one that gives you the strongest reaction. Ready?"

"Ready."

The images changed.

"Cat, dog, elephant, I don't know what that one is. Some kind of antelope. Elephant."

"It's a dibatag. You're right, it's a kind of antelope." The images changed.

"Cat, cat, cat, cat. Cat, I guess." The images were of four different domestic cats in various settings.

"Which cat?" She sounded amused.

"The one in the grass." A shining black cat, its eyes wide, crouched and ready to pounce. It was hunting. Gabriel thought it was the prettiest one, and the most interesting.

"If the images are the same thing to you, try to differentiate them when you call them out."

The images changed.

More image sets followed; these seemed to be more about scenery. Urban settings, open country, farmland, little European suburbs with their narrow streets and overhanging porticoes, seaside amusement parks, dunes beneath a twilight sun.

"We'll change categories now." Angela said.

"Uh," His mouth split in a weird grin again and he looked down at his feetbefore continuing. He wasn't usually prudish but this had taken him by surprise. "Lingerie woman, uh, normal woman, naked woman, prostitute." He hesitated. "Lingerie woman."

The images changed.

"Banana hammock, normal man, soldier, naked man." Again a pause. "Soldier."

The images changed.

"Lingerie, cat, soldier, gun. Shit. Uh, gun."

He thought the next set might be four different types of guns and was looking forward to it, but instead: "Lingerie woman, soldier woman.... lingerie man... soldier. Lingerie woman... no, soldier woman. Hsh."

The images changed.

"Soldier, Jack, soldier woman, Ana. Ana." It was a good picture of her. In fatigues in Yemen, her rifle slung back over one shoulder. He remembered her. The sensation was curious. She was so small and so dangerous and so reliable.

The images changed.

It was Jack, two pictures of Jack, both of them when he was young; one in battle gear, walking away from a smoking omnic with his rifle pointed down and that cocky grin on his face. The other was of him in a sweater in a cabin. The other pictures - Ana, the young Ana, with her thick black hair over her shoulder like a sheet of satin. One was of her crouched with her rifle on a yellow rooftop, in full uniform. She was drawing a bead on something. The other was her with Fareeha at a restaurant, where she was wearing a flowing white shirt and a gold necklace.

"Soldier Ana, Mother, Jack, Asshole. Soldier Ana."

"I hesitate to say this," Angela's voice broke in. "But 'Jack' and 'Asshole' are not descriptive enough..."

"Gun asshole and cabin Jack." He sneered.

The images changed. Two dozen or so more followed, variations of Jack and Ana, of Reinhardt and Angela herself, other Overwatch agents, other people the old Gabriel knew. There was an exceptionally cheeky picture of Angela in a white lace teddy that made him cock his head back at the observation window.

"Simulated, Gabriel."

"It's a good look for you, Doc."

"Thank you. Please try to focus. I just want to remind you that you should repeat the one you have the strongest reaction to, not the one you like the most."

"Do you want me to change my answer?"

"No! It's just a reminder. These will get harder starting now."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The images changed.

 

* * *

 

A long silence reigned. "...You - think you can just walk in here and ...." Jack was at a loss, incredulous.

"Rejoin the organization you founded," put in Ana, quietly but in a manner that did not brook interruption. "Now that it is clean again."

He reached for her then, but froze in midair; then he hurriedly unfastened his gloves and removed them, throwing them on the table. He put both his bare, ashen hands around Ana's shoulders and said nothing, only looked down at her from behind his mask. She looked back up at him with a faint smile upon her face.

"I am glad I was not wrong to believe in you, Gabriel."

His grip tightened warmly.

"You didn't make it easy, you know."

He snorted.

"I really thought you were a bad guy for a while, you were very convincing!"

"I am a bad guy."

"Perhaps you were. Jack?"

Jack was watching them both with a mystified expression. "What?"

"Aren't you going to say something?"

"Me?" His back was up and his neck bent, just like it always was when he was pissed about something. A familiar sight to Gabriel, who felt unaccountably glad to see it. "What the hell am I gonna add to this? You already decided. Leave me out of it, Ana." He threw up his hands. "Guy tries to kill me how many times, and you want me to just open the damn door for him?" Though for all the irritation in his tone, there was no anger. He wasn't guarded, like he would instantly get around a threat. Reaper saw that too.

"Hey," He cut in. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

"You asshole!—"

Ana got between them before Jack could hurl himself at Reaper's throat. It was nearly the happiest she'd ever seen Jack. She was sorry to stop him.

 

* * *

 

"No." He said sharply. "I'm not doing these anymore. Change it."

From the images of men and women there had been a dozen more introducing other sexualized subjects: younger men, younger women. Omnics. Animals, both real and illustrated. Then children. When offered a selection of child images only, Gabriel refused to name any for the subject of his strongest reaction. He would not name them out loud at all.

"We'll shift categories." said Angela.

"...Execution, state execution. Bombing. Murder, blunt instrument. Melee." Strongest reaction. "Execution."

The images changed.

"They're taking him from his home; he's in the van; lined up against the wall; execution." Strongest reaction, he tested himself. "Execution."

The images changed.

He swore under his breath. The images were simulated. He had to remember that. The treadmill was gradually increasing speed. "Stranger killing Ana. Stranger killing Jack. Jack killing Ana, Ana killing Jack. Jack killing Ana."

The images changed.

"Jesus Christ."

"I did warn you." She sounded chastened now. She had not really warned him how far this would go; if she had, he would have prepared for it, and the value of the exercise would have been lost. "Please proceed as best you can."

"It's Ana," He snarled. "And Jack. He's attacking her. What the fuck is that one supposed to be, rape? Is he raping her?" In the image Jack had her hands pinned over her head, both of hers in one of his own. She had tears on her face and her shirt was torn, exposing a breast which Jack pawed at with his free hand. Jack's expression was hidden, but his bare shoulders rippled with tension where he loomed above her. The treadmill forced Gabriel to break into a jog. "How  _nice_ , he's giving her a ring. Execution. Execution," He repeated, angrily.

The images vanished. In their place a scene filled the entire screen, living and moving, responsive to his movements like the city street had been.

It was a village in the desert. Just after dark, the heat was still furious, the streets limned with yellow sand. Daub and plaster houses with thick walls and small windows rose on either side of him. Pedestrians in loose flowing clothes surrounded him, though some wore modern, Western garments.

Angela spoke. "We're going to try the simulation again, alright? Please react as you normally would."

He knew towns like this. He was dark enough that if he kept his head down, he'd be taken as a local. There was something pleasurable about disappearing into a town, and also the titillation of perhaps being discovered as an American. He spoke a fair colloquial Arabic and an even better Masri, thanks to Ana. This was the sort of place he enjoyed being posted, out of the way, but not too rural. He'd been shot at a lot in towns like this, too, and that was also exciting.

He treadmilled down several streets, past shops and open-air markets, almost instinctively raising a hand to wave at children who ran past him with dark, daring eyes that flitted to him playfully and then got caught in shyness. He had a soft spot for children; he missed his brother, and the unfamiliar pang hurt somewhere inside. He thought about trying to go into one of the shops, or even houses, but some sort of game logic had taken him over. He assumed there was a mission that would present itself in time. He kept walking, seeing the stars shimmer into life one by one in the cool, dark testing room.

A turn through a narrow alley brought him to a dead end. When he turned around the buildings had shifted; he knew this wasn't the place he'd just left. Too many people walked past him and down the dead end. Straight ahead he saw two white-haired people, a man and a woman. The man had the woman by her slim arm. He was jerking her towards him.

Gabriel broke into a run, pounding down the street. The smell of fruit punch was disconcerting now, it didn't match the scene. The couple was impossibly far away. He knew who they were and he cursed to see Ana's smooth white braid fall upon her back when Jack dragged her up against his body.

"Please, stop." She cried in a soft voice not meant to carry. Even now, trying to save face. Gabriel wished he couldn't hear it.

 Jack tore her long robe open. They were surrounded by people in the dead end of an alley, and the bystanders merely formed a circle and started cheering. Gabriel was running now, but the camera was no longer responsive to his movement. It crawled forward painfully slowly through the maze of bodies. He heard Ana's pleading but Jack had pushed her to the ground and he couldn't see them...

Her low, throbbing voice spiked in a sudden scream. The bystanders moved aside: Jack was on top of her, his pants pushed down around his hips, rutting. He had her hands pinned above her head; she was naked on the tatters of her clothing. "Jack - why? Why are you doing this?" She begged him.

" _Shut up_." He slapped her across her face with his free hand and ground her into the dirt more fiercely with each thrust. He was hurting her. She couldn't hold back her cries. The lean muscles of her arms cut channels beneath her skin as she strained beneath him.

A dark trance had come over Gabriel. A freefalling hopeless sensation, where a long delay split what he did and what the outcome was. He whispered " _Please"_  in the darkness. Jack's hair thickened and turned yellow. Ana's came loose and turned black. He saw the lines vanish from her face, her slack breast lift, her lips flush and turn full. As beautiful as he'd ever seen her, she cried out to Jack, and to his bewilderment the cries had become " _Harder._ " In place of " _Please, stop_." The crowd continued cheering, applauding, egging them on in foreign tongues, throwing money at them. Jack's clothing melted away; his broad, scarred back arched above Ana, who clawed at him in pleasure and clasped her thighs around him high on his waist.

The scene shifted, faster and faster: members of the crowd began to strip down and masturbate to the spectacle. Ana grew small, smaller - a teenager, a child. A slim child who could be sister to the young Fareeha. Jack pumped away steadily, pausing only to crowd his too-large fingers in the child's tiny mouth to stem the crying. The crowd became monkeys, gorillas, omnics. They turned to him and began to talk, a mixture of Arabic and English: "Do you like this?" "Are you turned on?" Jack rolled over and forced the child to ride him, and Gabriel saw that it was no longer a little girl, but a boy, a dark eyed boy. The voices asked in Spanish: "Are you handsome?" The crowd moved in on the prone child and Jack to join in. The day broke too fast, in seconds. Jack looked him in the eye and Gabriel saw despair and fear there. "Help me, I did something wrong." He croaked. His face melted and became skinless, weeping blood-like fluid, the eyes like suppurating grey wounds. One by one the others in the crowd began to suffer the same fate. A boiling tide of blood rose in the streets, covering everything, baking into scabs beneath the high desert sun. Gabriel felt dizzy.

Angela was there, taking the sensors off of him. She had a warm, damp towel that smelled like lemon; she wiped it over his mouth, and he saw it come away with a dark smudge on it. He realized he was on his knees on the treadmill, hanging from the handlebars by his hands.

"I'm sorry," She said softly. "You won't ever have to do that again."

He evaporated beneath her fingers in a cold cloud of black smoke, and forced his way through the cracks beneath the door.

They had obtained EKG and neurochemical profile readings for an estimated 86% or so of his distress and arousal responses. It was far more than they'd hoped for, more than enough to baseline the procedure to come.

 

* * *

 

 

It was not easy, nor was Reaper simply accepted back into their trust, but the weeks turned into months, and he remained, and put up with their monitoring, and gave them the benefit of his many years of Talon intelligence. He snarled, but never refused. Nobody ever saw him without the cowl and mask; it was rare enough to find him in short sleeves or gloveless, his unnatural grey skin matte in the open air. He and Jack were nearly on speaking terms again when Angela asked to speak with Reaper alone, to explain to him that she had perhaps found a way to reverse his condition, if he so desired. He did.


	5. Two Hospital Visits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man i really didnt want to leave that last chapter just sitting there alone it creeps me out.
> 
> tldr summary for folks who skipped: reaper returned to overwatch. as it turned out, he and sombra had been working behind the scenes the whole time to root out the traitors in their midst - many of whom were people jack refused to believe were traitors the first time gabriel told him about them. some time after his return, mercy thinks she has discovered a way to reverse reaper's condition. reaper undergoes a severe and traumatizing psychological test intended to gauge his strongest emotional reactions as part of the work needed to support the reversal procedure.

**A Visit With Jack**

"John Gruber" was in private room 406. She found him awake and leafing through an old Jane's, reading about ships that hadn't sailed the open seas for seventy years. He looked big and hale and comfortable, too healthy to be parked in a hospital bed, with a glass of water on his tray and the lights low.

"Angela. Thought I heard your heels out in the hall." He smiled at once, folding the book closed.

"You're looking very well, Jack. Remind me to compliment your surgeon!"

"Who? I just know the nurses. Nicki's on call tonight. You want anything?" He let a hand hover near the call button.

She laughed it off. "Thank you, I'm fine. I could hardly believe it when they said you were up and about already."

"I got some good triage. They say that makes all the difference." His tone was warm, but the comment was loaded.

Just like him to come around to things in such short order. "Mm. If you don't mind my pulling up a chair..." She was not unprepared.

"Help yourself." He pointed out a cushioned armchair near the window, and she slid it over, plunked herself down, and placed her hands on her lap. This was her "listening attentively" pose since 17, and it still worked a treat on him.

"You're looking nice. Didn't go through all that trouble on my account, I hope." She was wearing an elegant black dress, pumps, jewelry; her hair was up in a chignon. Not her usual practical hospital wear, not that he minded.

"I'm presenting at a colloquium tonight. Not to worry, I won't need to be there until 19:30. We have plenty of time."

"...And Gabe?"

"He's stable and healing. Maucombe is overseeing him tonight." Jack frowned. "I know what you think of her, but she's a brilliant scientist. Ana is there too."

"Well," Said Jack, the frown lifting. "Ana."

"So! What are these famous questions of yours?"

He set the book onto the tray and leaned back, appraising her, settling in. "Guess I'd like to know what happened."

"To put it in layman's terms, we froze him in the state he was in."

Jack shook his head. "I saw the state he was in. You can't tell me that was the goal."

"Alright then," She replied patiently. "From the beginning. You know what happened to Gabriel, after Switzerland?"

"He died."

"You're being facile. He died and was incompletely resurrected, by the same process we use today, small-window resurrection."

"Like how you bring us back."

"That's right."

"Usually under fire."

Her lips compressed for a moment. She continued. "He was one of the first human subjects. We were desperate to bring him back. But he had been dead for too long."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that the molecular reconstruction was taking place on dead tissue as well as cells that were still alive. You know, you don't die all at once, Jack." It was an attempt at a joke. He didn't smile. "We didn't learn this right away. He was still there, in some senses. We thought there were side effects.... Oh..." She looked away. Gabriel had been barely cognizant and in terrible pain, his body dissolving in pieces, and infection set in on what still lived. She remembered those days in dark sleepless hours. "When we realized what was going on, the decision was made to try using the chronal accelerator on a cellular level, to try to "freeze" the cells that were alive in that state and then — that also failed."

"Failed how."

"Any given cell was and wasn't at the same time. Each independently in a "blink state." You have to understand, we were at the end of our tether." And she could not let him go. "He should have fallen apart right there on the table. It was amazing that he didn't. A scientific anomaly. Have you ever heard of the cortical homunculus?"

"Can't say that I have." He was listening intently now.

"In your brain you have an image of your body. Actually, several. Certain specific areas of the brain monitor sensory feedback for your hands. It's the same for your whole body: senses, motor control. Those images are literally written on your grey matter: you can lobotomize them out of someone. Don't look at me like that, I've never done it. There are other images, too. If you think of yourself, you think you look a certain way, hm? And you remember how you looked when you were young. Yet these two images don't conflict even though they are both you. The mind controls so much of the body, and 99.9% of the time it is unconscious. You breathe without thinking. If someone pokes you in the leg, you don't have to see the poke to know it happened. Your stomach produces more acid when you are hungry. You know what color your hair is even though you don't see it. Do you follow?"

"I think so. What's this got to do with Gabe?"

"Somehow — we still don't know how — he held onto a form because his brain was still telling his body that that was its form. It's possible that it still  _was_ his form, in a sense — I admit, quantum biology is not my specialization. But he learned he could control this. It was an accident at first, we don't know when the first incident was, but we do know he woke up one morning with nothing below his knees, and by the time I arrived with emergency support he was sitting cross-legged in a chair."

"With his legs," Jack hazarded. "Or without 'em?"

"He had them again. Over weeks, we — "

"If everything you're saying is true, how come his face was like that."

She spoke more slowly now. "I'm not sure. I would have to guess."

"Well go on."

"During the first... attempt, we tried to replace a lot of dead and damaged skin with grafts. We thought it was an anomalous wound. Especially over his head." She gestured: front and back of the head. "And his chest and back. We did not think he was conscious but... We may have been wrong. If he had been awake for that... the grafts did not take, there were further infections." She remembered the skin seething on his face, boiling with pus, sloughing off in black rot. Even she couldn't hide her horrified disgust in those days. "If he had felt it, I can't imagine the pain. It is possible that it became part of his image of himself, traumatically."

The sunset glowed a lovely rose through the window, and Jack laid back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. "Unbelievable." He thought about this. Then asked, "How did he see?"

"Not well. Perhaps you noticed how close he had to be to someone on the battlefield?"

"Thought he was just showing off." He tucked a hand behind his head.

"Probably his vision only came in flashes. He learned to work with it. He did so much, in so little time..." And one morning he vanished from the clinic.

"Did it hurt?"

"What?"

"When he — you know. Turned into a wraith, or whatever." Jack had never been comfortable with that term and its supernatural implications.

"I don't know. I don't think so. I don't see why it should."

Thin reassurance, but it took a little of the arch out of Jack's frown. "So, what happened in the lab?"

"I wanted to take advantage of that image I was telling you about. The unconscious image of the body in the mind. Well, that and the excellent documentation SEP kept on you both. We had full scans of his body over years and could use those to develop a "construction kit". We would be rebuilding living tissue in place of dead tissue. We would have to lock his form in place with something, a scaffolding, and reconstruct him from the ground up."

Jack chewed on this for a moment before asking, "Why did... we have to do it like that?"

"I always wondered why you didn't ask this!"

Abashed, he rubbed his head. "I didn't want to know. Figured you wouldn't kid around about a thing like that, but..."

She elected to spare him. "You know, even today reconstructed organs are rejected. Even the best doctor can't guarantee success. We think this is in part because the brain keeps an inventory and does not like to have its ledger altered! It would have been very dangerous to rebuild a body that Gabriel's brain rejected. We had to build the one it recognized."

"So?..."

"So we needed him to be "firing on all cylinders". Raised to such a peak that he would have to be sending and receiving the most information possible from his body, in a neurochemical sense. The protein synthesizers and transcribers could build  _an_  organ, but the messages from Gabriel's mind would make sure it was the right organ." The nanite constructors were created to respond to these neurotransmitters, to build receptors for them first and create the organ around them. In a sense, Gabriel had been given a nervous system before anything else. But Angela did not tell this to Jack.

"I get what you're saying," Jack said, incredulous. "But what the hell does that have to do with us having sex?"

 

**A Visit With Gabriel**

She had to remember that his beautiful dark brown eyes were implants, just like his left kidney, his bladder, most of his spine, his left hip and knee. He was finally a modern senior citizen. But the eyes were marvels of the field, responsive to light and emotional stimulus, made of synthetic proteins that would never lose their elasticity to time or sun damage. She got to see a lot of them; he did not yet have the fine motor control to close his translucent eyelids.

Gabriel hung suspended in the warm pink oxygenated fluid of the tank, motionless, raw-red, his outlines indistinct where the soaked tissues spread into the water like a coral, lit softly from all sides as the UV lamps bathed him in short cycles. He had made remarkable progress in two weeks. The plasticizers had almost totally dissolved into his flesh. He was awake now and then, and had already learned to use the cybernetic communication implant. His words displayed in shimmering light on the tank monitor; he could text her, too, but this was a little better, as she could look at him and talk to him face to face.

_Hi Doc_ appeared as soon as she was within five steps of him.

"Good afternoon, Gabriel! I didn't know if I'd find you awake. Just checking up."

_How is Jack_

"He's doing very well. You know he wasn't going to stick around now that he's out of the hospital. He left for Seoul last night. I gave him a clean bill of health."

_How are you_

_"_ Kind of you to ask! I had my favorite breakfast this morning: chocolate croissants..."

_And cafe au lait_  flashed on the screen while she spoke.

"You know me too well. How are you? Bored in there today?"

_Restless_

_Could go for croissants and coffee_

"I'll see what I can do." They both knew it would be weeks before he could even be given anything to chew.

_How bad do I look today_

_"_ On a scale of 1 to 10, I give you a 7. Skin is coming in nicely all over, good granulation tissue forming in all the right places. No sign of infection at all. Internal readings are also very good across the board. Your new heart is a healthy as a child's."

_Just what I always wanted_

"I am always glad to make a young man's dreams come true."

_News from Sombra_

_"_ Nothing today. Do you have a new riddle from Ana?"

_Yes. I am greater than God, more evil than Shaitaan, the poor have me, the rich don't, and if you eat me, you'll die. What am I?_

It came up so quickly he had probably just been thinking about it. She pressed a finger to her chin dramatically. "Hmmm, that's a tough one."

_Already tried death_

_"_ Even rich people die. I'll have to think about this one."

He curled a finger in the sterile oxygenated broth of the tank. He was capable of some movement on his own now, but it was painful, and he spent a lot of time in cold sleep in order to avoid even the temptation. What gestures he did make were often opaque, and he didn't, or perhaps couldn't, explain them.

"Well, I am in no hurry to get back to work, but I don't want to keep you up."

_If you need me I'll be here_

She saw on the monitor feed that he had pulled up a documentary on the American Civil War, which would play on the inside of his cybernetic eyes. He liked military history and football, though he also had a surprising depth of interest in Andalusian classical music and mezwed, flamenco and mariachi. He never talked about it. Or maybe it was just something to fill the time in which he was imprisoned in the tank.

He twitched in the water.

_Angela wait_

"Hm? Of course. What is it?"

_Did Jack ever ask you why_

"What's this, now? Are you worried about something?" It was mean to needle him, she knew. "Well, he did grill me pretty well when he was just out of surgery."

_What did you tell him_

"About the science. I don't think it's any great surprise that the two of you shared strong feelings about each other, for better or worse."

_What did he say_

"I don't think he understood it all. Actually, he did ask something about you."

_?_

"He wanted to know if it hurt when you turned into your wraith form."

_It hurt all the time_

This brought her up short. She had no answer.

_Thought you knew_

Softly, she replied, "I'm sorry, Gabriel. I had no idea." Her slim hand came to rest upon the glass. "You never said anything." Nor showed it, not that she remembered, but now she was racking her thoughts, she knew she wouldn't be able to forget it until she looked at the files from those days.

He was silent.

"I don't know that we could have fixed it, if we had known. I'm sorry. I would have tried."

He was already writing before she finished.  _It's over now. Tell Jack to stay out of trouble._

"I will. Let me know if you need anything. Including more pain medication."

_You did all you could to fix me Angie I know_

A small relief. She smiled and waved to him.

"You are starting to sound more like yourself again."

In four more weeks he could begin to come out for a little while at a time. They would have to keep him in a clean room to get him used to gravity again, though he would continue to breathe the tank fluid. He would start physical rehabilitation at that time. Little by little he would come back out into the world, until, in the third month or so, they would cut the cord and he would breathe air again. They could reculture his gut flora, his skin and mouth bacteria, his immune system; they could start leaving him alone overnight and enter into the long monitoring and maintenance phase. She estimated he would be able to leave the facility within a year.


	6. Chapter 6

"Ricken here."

"Hello there!"

"...How d'you always find these?"

"Oh, Jack." Angela said with an audible smile. "How are you doing? How is Australia?"

"S'good. Nice weather." He was in Darwin. The air was fresh after a night of rain, and humid breezes wended through the beach scrub. Jack had woken up only a half hour ago; from the third floor of the Hane Walkabout Inn, he watched the late morning traffic with a cup of bad hotel coffee, and started piecing together the day's itinerary. It was past time to move on that warehouse before the Toa ship came in, but he didn't want to move in without a full picture of what all was monitoring in that area - Toa or not. Her call had interrupted his frowning thoughts.

"I hope I'm not interrupting you."

"Nope." He was suspicious now. "What's new with you?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just putting my favorite patient through his paces. I thought I'd check on you."

" _Thanks."_ A pause. Jack slurped some coffee. "How's he doing?"

"Marvelous progress, Jack. I asked him for his own assessment this morning, and he said," She put on a gruff, low voice. "Aim's better. Grip's not as good." She laughed so cheerfully Jack almost smiled too.

"Well, that's good. Good to hear."

"You know, you should come and see him."

He looked out the window at nothing in particular. "I've got business here, Angie. I can't..."

She cut in. "There's no particular rush. Come whenever you're done."

Jack grumbled something indistinct.

"I think he'd really like to see you."

"Funny, he hasn't told me that." He tipped the blinds down with one finger.

Brightly, she replied. "You haven't really been in touch with him either, have you."

"Got nothing to talk about." Instantly it occurred to him how it could have been, working side by side with Gabriel on this mission. Second set of eyes. Reyes' solid threatseeking tactical mind. Someone at his back. Just like old times. A faint flavor of that other life that washed out of his thoughts almost as fast as it had come.

"Who said anything about talking? Come and look at his progress. Cheer him on! Don't you visit your friends when they're in the hospital?"

Another grumble. She'd slipped that needle in very deftly. "C'mon Angie..."

"Come on Jack. If I didn't know any better, I'd wonder if you were  _avoiding_  him for some reason."

"What's gotten into you?" There was a warning note in his tone.

"Now you have two reasons to come: for Gabriel, and to prove me wrong. Don't you think?"

His back up, he growled, "I'll think about it. I gotta go."

"Of course. Good luck down under, Mr. Ricken!"

He hung up before she could get any more of his goats.

 

* * *

 

The rehabilitation facility was a former Olympic building a ways out of Helsinki, which was the ideal place to fly to in mid-January. A bus took him from the airport down a snowy road into tall firs to the village, and in the village, a young agent waved him over from a car. Matti spoke excellent English and was happy to engage in it extensively with Jack the whole 40 minute drive to the site. He did not appear to notice either Jack's terseness or his long silences, instead filling up the void with more observations of global geopolitics and local history. Jack wondered how he could possibly be a native.

The facility was a big dingy white building in the middle of nowhere that looked like an airport hangar had been told to do a half-twist; the roof stuck up at both ends and deep snow gathered in the basin in the middle. Red-cheeked Matti insisted on carrying his bag when took Jack in, and he showed him where to hang his coat and change out of his boots, just inside the door, in a small sunken room. A few other coats, boots, and hats were hanging there.Matti was still talking after Jack climbed out of his gear.

Then, "I'm glad to have had the honor. You'll excuse me, I have to go... you know, so much to do back at headquarters. We've got a big mission coming up that--"

"Thanks, Matti. 'Preciate it. Drive safe."

It wasn't until the kid was gone that Jack realized he had no idea where to go. He stuck his head out into the hallway to sort of but not very committedly shout, "Angie?"

No response.

Now in one of the pairs of soft-soled slippers provided in the changing room, he padded down the long hallway. One door revealed a weight room, empty and dark; the next, an office with two red desks and red bookshelves and white walls, and some other room beyond. The lights were on, but nobody home.

He found another hallway that led off into the dormitory area, with private rooms, an open kitchen area, and a room with a projector in it, but these were also empty. This was getting old. He thought maybe it would be less of a waste of time to just go to the double doors at the end of the hall. He could see bleachers through the windows and an aqua glow.

This was paydirt: a laned pool, Angela up on the bleachers to the right, two assistants further down. A lean, dark form split the water with a powerful butterfly stroke; thick-armed, long-legged. A mop of black hair clung to his head on each exit. Jack's focus narrowed to this and only this. He didn't see Angela's bemusement, when she saw him. He didn't see her lift the whistle to her lips. The man in the water churned to a stop and stood up, turning in her direction.

"Do you want to stop for a moment? We have a vistor." She called. He looked at Jack, then back at her, then made for the ladder.

When he climbed out of the pool, he swept off his goggles and went right past where Angela was seated, approaching Jack instead. He was a tall man about Jack's height, maybe a little slimmer in the shoulders, but strongly built, and wearing a black Speedo. He was dark-eyed, with an aquiline nose and full lips framed by a moustache and goatee. He had a military bearing and the strong facial bones of a fully-matured man, but his skin was unlined, almost uncannily so, as if he had had supernaturally skillful plastic surgery done. It was impossible to tell how old he was. He swept his soaking wet hair back impatiently.

"You made it." He said, in a low, dense, familiar voice.

"...Gabe?"

"I look that different?" He looked down at himself as if something might be out of place.

"No," Said Jack, unconsciously stepping forward. He was too astonished to smile when he came up nearly toe to toe with Gabriel, searching him with his eyes. "No, that's not it."

Gabriel stood still for this inspection, dripping poolwater silently, his shoulders square, toes together. He could smell Jack: travel and icy air. Jack was wearing a thick brown sweater and jeans; he was rumpled and obviously worn out. But his eyes were clear and friendly, if confused. He was standing a little too close still, looking Gabriel over again and again. Gabe cleared his throat.

"Damn, you look good." Admiration rung in Jack's voice. He finally did smile, and Gabe smiled back, displaying a set of even white teeth, very charmingly. "Damn. Damn! You're really all there!"

"Took a while. I had some help." He was still smiling.

"Could've knocked me over with a feather. Damn. I — " He clapped a cold hand on Gabe's wet shoulder and dropped it just as fast. "I don't know what to say!"

"Mind if I put these down?" Gabe held up his goggles.

"No, hell. Anywhere you like."

"Thanks." He threw them idly in the general direction of the bleachers. Then he wiped some of the water off his chest and arms and came up close to Jack, face to face with him. A part of him took perverse satisfaction at the stunned look in Jack's blue eyes. He swept a hand around Jack's waist and cinched him in tight against his body, and Jack, who didn't know what to do, tried keeping his hands up and away like he was under arrest. Gabe didn't let go, and gradually, cautiously, Jack's hands came to rest on his shoulders.

"Don't half-ass it," Gabe growled close to his ear.

Jack threw both arms around him, enclosing him and locking down with gratifying strength. "Can't believe it's really you." He said in a tight, crabbed voice. It was Gabriel, alive, warm, and solid, here in his arms, and he felt moved by it in some unnameable way. He didn't even notice the damp.

Gabe rocked him, burying his face in the side of Jack's neck, nearly pulling him off his feet. "In the flesh." He took a deep breath and released him, drawing back, although his hand still rested on his narrow waist. His dark eyes were shining.

"Glad you're here. She's a slavemaster." He waved at Angela with a big fake grin. "Get her off my back."

Angela waved back happily. Jack rubbed down his white hair and muttered, "Not my battle. You're on your own, Reyes."

"Brave Commander Morrison..." He sneered. Then he tapped Jack's chest. "Come on, I wanna see it."

Jack slapped him away and rolled his head on his thick neck. "Ah jeez, Gabe."

"Open up, Morrison. I showed you mine." Out came Gabe's sly smile — Jack hadn't seen it in fifteen, sixteen years, easy.

"Not really the same thing," He grumbled. But he pulled the hem of his sweater and undershirt up to his neck. There, in the center of his broad chest, was a pale flap scar several inches long. Gabe traced it, then covered it with his hand.

"You had a cyborg one put in."

"Didn't really trust a reconstructed one."

"Does it work good?"

"Haven't had any problems so far."

"Yeah, well, I'm half robot now too." He slid his palm  down Jack's body, remembering him. The hallway, the bed. He'd thought about them over and over again, in the long months in the tank, in the weak, dark drag of coming back up to the surface. He remembered Jack's thick chest under his hand like an anchor. Jack held very still.

He plucked his hand away. "How long are you staying?"

The answer came slow and with a croak. "Depends, I guess."

"Wednesday is steak night."

Jack gave him a look like he wasn't sure whether this was meant to be a motivating factor or if Reyes was fucking with him. Former Blackwatch Commander Gabriel Reyes gave him a look that said nothing at all and moved right along.

"Relax, Jack, it's good steak. You should stay a few days."

"And do what?"

"Take some time off. Train. Talk." He came a little closer.

"Talk." Jack's eyes searched Gabriel's, incredulous and warm.

"Talk. We used to be friends."

"You wanna be friends."

"Since you're here." Gabriel said.

Jack nodded, assessing. "So I flew all the way out here to make friends with you."

"Mm."

"Looking like you do now."

"Yeah."

Solemnly Jack said. "Like a hot fuckin' teenager."

Gabriel cracked a grin and Jack wrapped him up and held him close, chuckling. A strange sensation like fear without the edge of threat filled him when Gabriel threw an arm around his big shoulders and laid his cheek against him.

 

* * *

 

Angela did not, in fact, cut any slack for the special occasion, and it was Jack's assigned duty to follow along and inform Angie how her specimen was performing compared to the Reyes of yore. After finishing his swim, Gabriel had a course of cooldown stretching; he was flexible for such a big man, and Angie had to ask Jack three times how it compared to the past when Gabe jacknifed his ankles and arms up in the air, then spread open slowly, controlled, until he lay flat on the ground again.

Lunch came next and it was prodigal. Jack had to assume there was a professional staff involved who just never allowed themselves to be seen, because the table in the dorm dining room was already groaning when they got there. Gabe had the appetite of a growing boy and he easily worked his way through three quarters of a grilled chicken accompanied by a pile of cebollitas and some sort of harissa thinned down to dipping consistency, along with salad, squash, and two slices of limp, fatty bacon (Jack, an inveterate crisp-almost-to-the-point-of-burnt bacon man, was queased out by this.) Jack and Angela and the two assistants, Marisa and Fabrice (both graduate students of Maucombe's), ate with him, though at nowhere near the same clip.

Gabe himself was in rare form at lunch; Jack literally could not remember the last time he'd seen him so lively and good-humored. He held court with a tall red glass of unsweetened jamaica in hand, telling stories of all of Jack's most embarrassing training fuckups, or the time in Irkutsk that he and Jack and Ana had to hold a flank position against an advancing omnic force, except every day it snowed, and every day they had to strike camp and build it more or less on top of where it was before, so they could keep stripping the same trees for bark except higher and higher up. Angela was laughing so much she hardly had a chance to eat. Her bright eyes kept flicking between Gabriel and the quieter, more reserved Jack; Jack only chimed in here and there, mostly corrections, and threats to spill the truth on Gabe. But nothing came of those threats.

From behind his gruff scowling Jack watched Gabriel in wonder. He was like a new man. Or rather, like an old man, the old Gabriel, untouched by time and the war they'd fought against each other. He was a lion, and the thorn had been removed from his paw.

"You're staring," Angela murmured to Jack, at one point.

Jack, who had been staring, turned away quickly. "Huh... am I?"

"You are."

Jack scowled more.

He didn't mean it, she knew. "You know... he likes it."

This elicited a dubious grumble.

"He wasn't like this when it was just the four of us."

"Eat your chicken," He grunted, which meant  _mind your own business_.

She wanted to smile meaningfully at Gabriel, but when she looked up, she saw that his sharp eye was already on her. And he had stopped talking.

After lunch, there was a session of cognitive therapy which used the implants in Gabe's brain and eyes; he laid out on a comfortable couch in the office, folded his hands over his stomach, and looked like a man having a nice postprandial nap. Jack had been on planes and buses and in cars with mouthy agents for the last 23 hours, so he elected to take a real nap. Marisa showed him to a room in the dormitory.

"Mr. Reyes' is right across the hall from you." She informed him, tiptoeing over the marbled linoleum.

Jack waited until she was gone to snoop. The powerful lure of discovering whether the new Reyes was like the old Reyes was too much for a man with his burned-out ethical fiber.

The steel handle opened easily; it was unlocked. Inside the room was dark and in perfect military order: bed made, almost nothing on any surface. A few books were arranged on a shelf over the headboard of the bed, though Jack couldn't read the titles from here. A big trunk sat at the foot of the bed. A pair of jackets hung from a coat rack next to a desk which had an older model of computer set up on it. There were no photos, no mementos. If the new Reyes was this much like the old Reyes, anything sentimental would be in a lockbox in the trunk. He could have left it at that but there was a notepad out by the keyboard and Reyes' black script was regimenting the rows.

He had to look.

  _Jeremy Ricken - 061 88 8930 03900_  
Rm 46 Hane Walkabout Inn  
675 Berrimah  
Darwin AU +7.5

_Route SG arrive before 10_

He felt heat trickle down the back of his neck. He put the notepad down in the position he found it and retreated to his room. It was laid out just like Reyes'. He stripped down and shoveled himself beneath the scratchy wool blankets. It was difficult to relax, not just because it was cold, but because if he relaxed he would start to think, and he didn't want to think right now. There was a difference between the notes the old Reyes kept on a computer and the ones he preferred to write down. Jack flipped onto his stomach and swept an arm around the pillow to smother himself to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

When he woke, he flopped over blearily and checked the clock: 21:13. Must have been more worn out than he'd thought. He could hear noise from the rooms beyond; not loud, just present. A light shone from under his door.  
  
He washed his face and neck and hands and pits in the ensuite lavatory. Then he put on all his old clothes. When he stumbled towards the door he found his bag sitting there on the floor. Someone must have moved it here. Someone very quiet must have done it. He ruthlessly stemmed that series of thoughts before it went any further. In any event, it was a relief, and he could and did put on fresh undies and pants and a lightweight, warm long-sleeved shirt. In hall slippers, stretching as he went, he emerged from his cave to hunt down the noises.  
  
He found Fabrice first, who was reading an old Italian crime paperback at the table in the kitchen area. He was a very lean young man with a pile of dark curly hair and huge dark eyes that made him look like a lamb. Angela had told him about her diligent French assistants; Maucombe, who was half-Syrian, seemed to prefer students like herself. This one was a brilliant young expert on protein mutations.  
  
" _Oú sont les autres?_ " Jack essayed. He had an American accent as hard as a mouth full of rocks, and it took Fabrice a moment to parse.  
  
" _Docteur Ziegler et Gabriel? Là._ " He pointed at the projector room, from whose open door Jack could hear a televised crowd cheering.  " _Marisa, je n'ai aucune idée oú est-t-elle. Si vous avez faim--_ "  
  
" _Danke,_ " Jack muttered, cutting him off. He stuck his head inside the projector room.  
  
It was not large. Three of the walls were orange and one was white; there were armchairs on either side of a long couch that sat against the back wall and a coffee table. The lights were on, if dim. Angela was curled up in an armchair, wearing a long, blush pink chemise and robe, her hair loosely gathered in a high ponytail. She wielded a portable video game console and appeared to be very invested in the action. On the couch, Gabriel was stretched out on his side, his feet up on the cushions, a cold beer sweating in his hand. He had changed, too, and was wearing red t-shirt and jeans. He was watching a soccer game on the projection screen: Algeria vs. Denmark. One black eyebrow arched when he noticed Jack.  
  
"Welcome back to the land of the living."  
  
Before Jack could answer, "Jack!" Angela said, looking up and beaming at him. "Did you sleep well? I must say, you were out for quite a while."  
  
"Long trip." He stepped into the room and checked out the game.  
  
"You missed dinner, I'm afraid. There's plenty of leftover roast to cut up for sandwiches if you're hungry."  
  
"It's in the refrigerator," offered Gabriel.  
  
"Is that where the beer is too?"  
  
He took himself off upon Gabriel's affirmative nod. Fabrice had re-engrossed himself in his novel and hardly noticed Jack rummaging around. Bread was in the cupboard next to the fridge; roast in the fridge, along with a case of IPA. Gabe called from the other room as if psychic, "Hey Jack, grab one for me."  
  
"Get it yourself." He got a second can out anyway. "Angela, you want anything?"  
  
"Hmm... Are there any pickles left?"  
  
Jack searched the fridge door. "Uhh..." There was a thick glass jar of what looked like pickles, with a Russian label. "This Russian thing?"  
  
"Yes! If it's not too much trouble."  
  
When Jack came back he had a sandwich on a red plastic plate, two cans tucked under his arm, and a pickle pronged on a fork. He handed over the pickle to a barely-attentive Angela.  "Move," He muttered at Gabriel, who failed to move until he saw that Jack had another beer for him, at which point he folded his long legs up so Jack could sit.  
  
He and Gabe watched the game in silence. Algeria was up 2 and stayed up over the half. There was a lot of time to think, so Jack did. Angela, perched in her chair, looked - as always - like an immaculate 20-something. Gabriel had the look of an overmatured college undergrad, or at least it seemed like that from what Jack remembered. They were sitting around like it was the end of a mission, except Jack was twenty years out of sync; he alone had aged, and he could feel, in Gabriel's and Angela's comfortable air, an order that wasn't his own. He didn't belong here, not quite. He ate his sandwich.  
  
Shortly after the second half had begun, Angela clicked shut her game console and got to her feet. "Well, gentlemen, I think that is it for me tonight." Her tone was faintly sarcastic for some reason.  
  
"Good night, Angie." Gabriel said, flicking her a glance. "Good night, Angie." Jack said, looking up at her with a smile. She smiled back. "Good night, Jack. Good night, Gabi." She came to the couch and bent over to kiss Gabriel's cheek before she left. Her little white fingers fell upon his shoulder, and Jack watched them with a slowly darkening frown.  
  
"Don't I get a kiss?"  
  
Angela laughed cheerfully. "Perhaps if you stay long enough, you will earn one. Good night!" She sashayed out the door with a saucy look over her shoulder at Jack. "Lights on or off?"  
  
Jack, who hadn't expected to be refused, went red. "Hey!..."  
  
Gabriel smiled to himself. "Off, thanks."  
  
Fabrice stuck his head in a few moments later. "Good night, Mr. Morrison, Gabriel. I'm going to bed now."  
  
"G'night, Fabrice."  
  
" _Dormez bien. À demain._ " said Jack, unapologetic in his dor-MAY BEE-enh.  
  
Fabrice restrained his reaction and turned off the kitchen lights when he left.  
  
Denmark drew even. Gabriel watched the black rectangle of the open door. Jack put his empty can on the table. Algeria scored.  
  
"Jack."  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"How come you never wrote, when I was in the tank?" Ana had sent him riddles and pictures. Sombra sent smug, vicious summaries of all the action he was missing. Fareeha sent handwritten letters that had been scanned: her happy memories of him, best wishes for his health. Even Reinhardt wrote - short, stern, moral letters, as if he needed ethical reconstruction as well as physical. Amelie sent a single line, but it was enough. " _Bonne chance, chouette_." But Jack sent nothing. Yet Jack had come all the way out here to see him. When Angela told him about it he'd been surprised.  
  
Jack sat up a little more straight. He answered slowly,. "...Didn't think you'd wanna hear from me."  
  
"Huh."  
  
Algeria’s forward plucked a sloppy pass and drove it towards the goal. He scored,and the room echoed with the roar of the crowd and the announcers explaining in rapid Finnish.  
  
Jack spoke again. "Dunno if you remember, but you weren't real happy about it." He looked towards the door, or away from Gabriel. "I figured..."  
  
"You mean in the lab."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Some commercials played: soda, family cars, a new type of reconstructive for male pattern baldness. Jack cleared his throat and said, "You didn't write to me."  
  
It was Gabriel's turn to watch the game a while. Finally, he murmured, "I wasn't ready."  
  
The blue light of the projection screen reflected, flickering, over two unmoving faces with blank expressions.  
  
"Why'd you come?" Gabe asked.  
  
At first Jack thought the answer was  _because Angela made me_. But he felt a heaviness in the room and in the question, and it settled low in the pit of his stomach. "...I wanted to see you. Guess that was it." He stretched out and put the empty can on the table, and then he looked at Gabriel. Gabe's long body was balanced at the other end of the couch, his big shoulders mashing up the cushions, his ankles crossed on the table.

Gabe looked at him. Jack was hunched, leaning a little forward, hesitation in his eyes, his pink lips set, his long coltish legs tense. "Glad you came."  
  
"Me too. Listen," Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "If you want to forget it ever happened, I'd forget it too."  
  
Gabe snorted at that. A darkness colored his voice when he spoke. "'Forget it.'" He unfolded himself from the couch and sat up. "You think I'm ever going to forget that?" He started to stand, and Jack stood up with him, hastily. Before he could say anything Gabe cut him off.  
  
"You fucked me on a hospital table."  
  
"Gabriel--"  
  
"You put your hands on me. You went out of order to do it."  
  
Jack felt a pale jolt of fear in his gut. "...I wanted to--"  
  
"You wanted to kiss me. Remember that, Jack?" Gabriel said, sour, almost mocking. "'If you can say mouth, you have one.'"  
  
His confusion crystallized into anger. "...What do you want from me? You want me to say I'm sorry? I'm--"  
  
Gabriel closed the distance between them, and Jack tried to back off and wound up stumbling against a chair. Gabriel's hands were on him, pulling him up with palpable strength but no roughness. "Lived with that for eleven months." He lifted a hand to Jack's face and Jack slapped him away instinctively. Gabriel snatched his hand to cut him off from any more of that shit.  
  
"You want to forget about it? I thought about it every day."  
  
This, at last, brought Jack up short. His eyes flicked swiftly between Gabe's face and their linked hands, looking for threats. Nothing. A question parted his lips but he didn't say anything. Gabriel lifted his captured hand and placed it palm-down on his chest.  
  
Disbelief flooded Jack. When he looked at Gabriel he saw a set, determined face and Gabe's eyes on him. Gabriel moved his hand: gentle and unhurried across the broad rise of his pecs. He inhaled. His skin was palpably warm beneath his shirt. Jack let himself be led, half from fear and half from hope, then pulled loose. Gabe let him go. He swept his palm down Gabe's side and felt his narrow waist, hard with muscle.  To this, Gabe left his body open, his shoulders back, and Jack saw him tilt his chin back like an invitation.  
Jack stepped into his space and brought an arm up around Gabriel's shoulders like he was shielding him, drawing him close into the cup of his body. He was watching Gabe's face still, avidly. Waiting for the flinch. It never came. He bent to Gabe.  
  
Gabriel's dark, humid, plush mouth and the soft bristle of his moustache. Three decades of waiting. Jack's arm tightened around him. Against his chest he felt Gabriel's heartbeat like his own.  A deep warmth burbled up from inside, that came from Gabriel's lips moving against his own, parting, clinging, sweeter than fantasy.  
  
They went slow. Jack kissed Gabriel, then nudged his chin up and bent down to press his lips to his throat, the underside of his jaw. Gabe folded his cheek against him and folded his fingers into Jack's short, crisp white hair and held him, pressing up against him, as Jack ducked to his collarbone. His quiet  _"Aaaa..."_  was resonant in Jack's ear.  
  
Just like in the hospital, Jack was strong, steady, certain even if cautious. When Gabriel stroked the length of his back he could feel Jack's body shift for him. He smirked, realizing Jack was trembling, that he moved so carefully because of a hunger that was at the limit of his self-control. He was solid, and when Gabriel touched him - his strong chin, his dense, hard shoulders, his arms - Jack watched him with the same focus that he'd watch a dangerous mark. Jack wedged closer when Gabe brushed over the pap of his chest. He remembered this too.  
  
With both hands at Jack's sides, he pushed his dark shirt up. Jack sucked in a sharp breath and started to lift his arms, but Gabe ignored him, bending, closing his mouth around the flushed, firm pink nipple.  
  
Jack's "Oh God." broke their hesitation. When he released Gabe's head they both stripped down without ceremony. Jack held Gabe's shoulders, keeping him apart, just so he could look at the whole length of Gabe's beautiful body. He was fascinated and thorough, and when his eyes met Gabe's again Gabe could see  gratitude shining there. Gabe grinned and looked back. Jack was grey, rumpled with age, softer in places than he'd been as a young man, but he was still Jack. Strange to think of him as good-looking, but he was, wasn't he, with his strong jaw and handsome, regular features, his broad body and narrow hips. Gabe touched a long scar over his belly.  
  
"You look good."  
  
Jack leaned back on his heels, looking faintly incredulous. "All yours."  
  
When they came together again, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hips to hips, like twins, Gabe felt his cock and balls nestle against Jack's, where the skin was tender and they throbbed and lifted against each other and he shuddered at this novel intimacy.  
  
"Couch," Jack said hoarsely.  
  
It took some negotiation. They barely fit stretched out, with Gabe's back squashed into the cushions. Jack kissed him deliciously and dragged a knee up over his hip, and ran a hand down his powerful thigh and cupped his ass and hauled him close. "Want you," he muttered against Gabe's mouth.  
  
"You're hard as a rock, Morrison." Just saying it made a tight laugh squeeze out of him as his stomach flexed in automatic excitement. This felt so good and strange that it was too much. He clutched at Jack, pushing his face against the crook of his neck. Surprisingly, Jack brought a hand around the back of his head and held him there, and nothing more than that. That same sensation, the wall around them, the close warmth between them, crept over Gabe.  
  
"Dreamed about this." He mumbled at last.  
  
Embarrassed, Gabe said, "Jack..."  
  
"You and me, just like this."  
  
Gabe didn't say anything.  
  
"Just like this." He rubbed the rise of Gabriel's arm. His thick hard-on had subsided a little but still rested comfortably against Gabe's hips.  
  
His inaction tugged at Gabe like a tide. He’d stuck his head out in hotter fire than this. He’d kissed off an evac to come to Jack. For the same reason now as then Gabriel unfurled from beneath him and got both hands around Jack's face. As that looked at each other, blue in the cast light from the screen, Jack mouthed  _come here_  and tilted his chin up.  
  
A more exploratory kiss, with Gabriel in control this time. He liked to nibble; he tugged on Jack's lower lip and felt it tighten with his smile. He felt Jack's hand brush the small of his back; his hips jolted forward.  
  
"Sensitive." Jack said, smug.  
  
This pissed Gabe off, and he smiled too because it felt good even to be caught like this. Jack stroked him like that again and he felt it in the back of his brainstem. "Where's your sensitive spots."  
  
"Here," Jack said, pulling a hand away from his cheek and guiding it down his body, lower and lower, towards his dick.  
  
Gabe tugged back, annoyed at the joke. "Subtle."  
  
Jack chuckled and refused to release him. He brought Gabe's hand to the crest of his hips, the pronounced slant of muscle that led to his penis. "Here," He repeated. Gabe found that if he touched him there as light as Jack had touched him, Jack's belly would tighten instantly and his dick would twitch.  
  
Slow, lazy kisses; Jack's hand searching his black, silky hair, or his back or his thigh, stroking down the sensitive inside. Gabe bit his shoulder at the sudden rush of feeling and Jack groaned happily. It was Gabriel who wrapped a hand around Jack's dick first, letting it fill his palm.  
  
"You're soft."  
  
"You want harder?" He squeezed, and Jack writhed with a sharp intake of breath.  
  
"Meant your hand is soft." It was true; Gabe's body was uncalloused, unscarred. "Would've said it felt nice. Better'n those claws of yours." He continued, relieved, as Gabe stopped strangling his dick.  
  
"Claws?" He racked his memories. What the fuck? Oh. The gloves. His gloves. His old gloves-- "--Did you think about that, Jack?" He asked, a dark glee underlighting his voice. He stroked his former enemy's hard dick. Jack's expression became shuttered. "Did you..." He laughed, not a nice laugh.  
  
Jack's hand slid over his spread thigh and under, finding his balls, which he cupped in his hand. Gabe gasped. "Pay attention," said Jack, in a commander's voice. He tugged on him and rolled his thumb over the humid skin there, skirting Gabe's ass.  
  
"...Ha ha... Morrison..." He hissed. A plume of gunfire split his memories. His fingers circled the fat, hot head of Jack's cock too snugly, so Jack's shaft popped into his palm as he moved lower. Jack's turn to gasp.  
  
A challenge, now. Jack got his hand between their bodies as well and around Gabe. It was a complicated position; their wrists grinding against each other, hardly enough room between them to move, trying to find a rhythm that wouldn't make them bump into each other wrong. Their legs twined, their faces resting close together on folded arms, Gabe let his mouth hover near Jack's, not quite kissing, just close, so their lips smeared together as they arched. Jack's eyes slid shut; his slack mouth caught against Gabe's, his hard dick swelled in his hand as Jack thrust shallowly against him. The steady driving power in his hips was fascinating. Gabe let go of his dick to grab his ass, whispering "Keep going," just to feel him. Jack groaned and arched, and it spiked the concupiscent heat in the center of Gabe's thoughts.  _He fucks the same way I do._  
  
Then Jack drew his foreskin down again and rubbed the underside of his head and that was his last coherent thought for a while.  
  
They strained together, got close together. Jack was going to mouth "I'm close," but Gabe caught his mouth and drowned it. "Come on." He said. "Come on..."  
  
"You..." Jack managed, bucking against him. His arm was hard beneath Gabe's body. Jack was warring with himself not to pull him so close it would force them to stop.  
  
"With you."  
  
Jack panted against his mouth and pulled a kiss out of him. His eyes scrunched closed again, his brow furrowed. Gabe watched him hungrily. "Come on," he urged again. Jack's hand was rough and distracted around him, dipping down to stroke his balls and milking its way back up too slow. His breath hitched. Gabe felt a looming greed for him, a reaper's lust, to surround and devour him in curling black smoke. When Jack came - when he felt the first spurts of warm come against his belly - he almost laughed in the rush of triumph. Jack was quiet, his teeth grit and flashing in the dim room, and he drove his forehead against Gabe's and held him there.  
  
Gabe was only a few strokes behind. Impatient with Jack's slowness, he ground into his hand, pushing the head of his cock against Jack's firm belly. Jack ducked down and sucked at his throat and bit his collarbone and Gabriel made a strangled noise and fucked into Jack's grip hard. "That's it." Jack murmured against his ear, licking him, biting him again there. The pain, the control, Jack's strength... A slurry of pleasure across his consciousness. He felt himself coming before he realized what was happening, and he gripped Jack, who stroked him through it with a chest-deep rumble of gratification.  
  
"Fuck, Gabe..." As Gabe went soft in his hand he let him go and smeared his fingers through the mingled semen between them. An involuntary shiver pulled up his spine from somewhere in his belly. He wanted to taste it. He wanted to taste Gabe alone. He wanted to be connected like this, mixed like this, inseparable from Gabriel. "Feel this?" He nudged Gabe's face up and drew him into a kiss that was tender with fatigue. Then smell of them together hit him and his nostrils flared and a fresh lust poured through him.  
  
Gabriel felt the darkness of the room indiscernable from Jack's touch. He was covered, overwhelmed. Jack's tender mouth was on his again, his tongue slipping into him, hard and close, then gently feeling out the rim of his lips. He drew back only long enough to take a deep breath filled with the scent of Gabe and their sweat and come before he dove back in, holding Gabe's head, sucking on him, pulling the air out of him, not with the desperation of some starving hunger but sumptuously, out of rich fat greed for him.  
  
"Jack--" Jack kissed him again and closed his hand around Gabe's. "Jack, Jesus." He rolled Jack back, and Jack only fought him for a second. Beneath him, Jack's face was open, relaxed, though there was a question in his eyes.  
  
Gabriel forgot what he was going to say. Jack's lips were parted and Gabe bent to him again and kissed him and Jack enthusiastically reciprocated and his hand tightened around Gabe's and Gabe broke off again, baffled and smiling.  
  
He remembered. "We can't stay in here."  
  
"Okay. So?"  
  
"So..." Jack brushed his cheek with the backs of his fingers while he tried to talk. "...We should go somewhere else."  
  
"Shower?"  
  
Gabriel cocked an eyebrow at that.  
  
"I'd love to--" Jack started, but Gabe spoke over him.  
  
"Think that will help?"  
  
"I'd love to suck your dick in a shower," Jack finished.  
  
Gabriel pulled up their entwined hands and kissed the back of Jack's knuckles to hide the shape his mouth made at that. "Are you always like this?"  
  
Jack smiled, a sunny smile, like a much younger man. "Feels good." He meant this, Gabriel, their nakedness, their closeness, the prospect of more.  
  
Gabe wound up smiling back, then frowning darkly from a sudden pang, then smiling again as soon as he saw Jack's reaction to that. He felt manipulated and vulnerable, like Jack was seeing some part of him he didn't want to show. And yet to keep this going he would put up for it for any length of time.  
  
"You always like this?"  
  
"No." He pulled his hand free and cupped the back of Jack's neck, and Jack rested his hands on Gabriel without saying anything in response. They looked at each other in silence.  
  
Jack saw an unfocus on Gabriel's face, a subtle sense of loss. He had a suspicion that it was the wrong time to ask dumb questions, so he didn't  _say are you okay_  or  _what's wrong_  or even  _what's on your mind_. Instead he started to sit up. Gabriel went with him. They unpeeled their sticky bodies from each other; Jack grabbed his t-shirt from the table to wipe himself off, and he folded it over before dropping it on the couch next to Gabe. He stood up and stretched his arms. His body still rung with the echoes of Gabriel's weight and touch and kisses.  
  
"I'm gonna go wash up." He made for the door, in total disregard of his own nudity. Over his shoulder, he said, in rough voice that did not hide his want, "There's a lot of things I'd do to get you in bed aga--"  
  
"Do you know which way the showers are." Gabe fixed him with a serious stare as he toweled off his belly.  
  
The square shape of his shoulders slumped.  
  
Gabe got up and started collecting all the discarded clothing. "Just gonna leave all the dirty work while you go off."  
  
Jack turned, and leaned back against the wall, and crossed his arms, and watched Gabe pick his way across the room and bend over to get socks or belts.  
  
"Can't keep your shit together, can you." Gabriel said, shoving the pile of clothes at his chest. Jack had to scramble to collect them before they fell. "Typical Morrison."

 

* * *

  
Gabriel woke up with Jack's arm bolted down over his chest and Jack's powerful heat at his back.  
  
"Awake?"  
  
Angela hung in the doorway, regarding Gabriel's predicament with a pert smile that verged on smugness.  
  
"Mmmnh."  
  
"I hope you don't think you'll get the morning off."  
  
"Angela..."  
  
"Since Jack is here I thought we'd start with a run today."  
  
He felt Jack's arm tighten around him, warm lips on the back of his neck. "Pass."  
  
"Jack, I appreciate your concern but..."  
  
"You worked hard for this one. Think you can let us enjoy it."  
  
The interested light in her eyes wavered; Gabe saw many emotions ripple over her open, expressive face.  
  
"Well," She said, finally, making a show of tucking the stylus into her tablet. "Even God rested on the seventh day."  
  
When she left Gabe shifted in Jack's arms, turning to him, his beautiful dark brown eyes clear and curious as he searched Jack's face. He was putting the pieces together, slowly.


	8. Some time later, some time before

"...It's a shame it had to end like this, Jack."

Jack threw his chin back, jerking at the black glove around his throat. "Can't believe I trusted you. All those years."

"You always wanted to see the world in black and white, like a boy scout. The truth is more complicated."

"You wanna get your dog off me?" He bristled

"That remark could be interpreted as racist."

The strong fingers around his throat flexed in warning. Jack sneered.

"I'd rather not, you know." Continued General Marcel Tennant, Director of UN Peacekeeping Forces. "We're old friends. I haven't very many left."

"Maybe you should stick to your own kind."

Marcel smiled pleasantly. "Canadians?"

"Cannibals."

The pleasant smile inverted. Marcel gestured; his wiry Odishan guard tightened down on Jack's neck with astonishing power. SEP strength. Jack slammed his palms against the arms of the chair, gasping. He was bound at his wrists and his ankles. His old friend had a full reception for him here in his office, thirty-eight floors up: in addition to the Odishan there were three other armed men in uniform. They flanked Marcel, who leaned back in his leather chair, secure behind his big burl-topped desk, before banks of windows that looked out over the city. Sunlight flooded the room.

"You of all people should understand. We can't allow your Overwatch to undermine international security for," He lifted his hands and formed scare quotes. "'Justice.' Nobody else has to die; we just want to stem..."

Behind Marcel, a guard clapped his hand to his ear and ducked away. Jack heard him hiss, "What do you mean, you can't see anything." And then Jack saw him reach for his gun.

"...The threat. Tell us where the ape is."

"Don't do this, Marcel."

"Jack, please." He said, genially. The guard blocked him off bodily. As Marcel's gaze shot up, he muttered, "Sir, there's a problem downstairs."

"What do you mean, a problem?"

"It's not too late." Jack put in.

The heavy double doors of the office flew open with a boom. Beyond was a solid wall of darkness.

"What the fuck?!" Shouted the blond behind Marcel.

Jack smiled.

A figure emerged from the darkness: a man's shape, tall and broad-shouldered. He wore black body armor beneath a long black coat; a cowl was pulled up around his head, and his face was covered with a pale mask. In his wake plumes of  smoke trailed in from the hall.

"Hello, Marcel." He said, raising a fist. A faint crisp jingle sounded, like glass shattering, and the room swarmed with blackness within miliseconds. There was no time for the guards to do any more than unholster their weapons.

Jack felt the breeze of movement directly behind his head. A man shouted and the shout was cut off by a meaty burble; a heavy thump on the floor followed. Jack smelled him, could feel him even in the rising heat of the smoke, could turn to him as his wrists were cut free.

"Ankles too." He murmured.

"No time." Said the low voice in his ear. Something light and hard dropped into Jack's lap, followed by something heavier. At his cheek he felt the touch of sharp claws, very light, caressing him. "Get ready." Jack caught the smell of him even over the metal.

"Be careful."

In the darkness, Reaper lifted his head and laughed. Within his eyes a wafer-thin sheet of golden organic microprocessors generated the room's structure and contents for him; for the warm bodies in the room - the heat sensors could pick those up and paint them in, but he didn't really need them as much as anyone thought. Something about his old habits had left a deep mark on this consciousness. He knew where the bodies were; he could feel them, could smell their soft quivering lives like ripe fruit in the ink. He spun away from Jack's position to assault the guards at the desk.

Jack collected his visor from his lap. Gabe had left him one of his knives. He knew this one, with its short, heavy blade. It sliced through the nylon cables easily, and he got to his feet, and searched the room for Gabe's heat signature.

He was by the windows, cool against the panicked flares of the soldiers. Jack saw him lift a pulse rifle in Gabe's direction, distinctive for the hot shear generator. Must have heard him. Good training. Then a bit of red flung itself off him and the gun faltered. "Jesus fuck!!" Screamed a voice in the darkness.

Gabe must have cut his hand off. The ghostly blue sweep of Gabe's arm cut the dark, and the blob of the guard's head faltered at a weird angle and he fell to the ground.

Took Jack a moment to realize why Gabe was sticking with the knives - he had a couple of big kukri he liked to work with in close quarters now. If he shot, he'd hit the windows, and the blackout gas would leak out. He must be expecting company, Jack thought. Anyway, he had work to do himself. Keeping his head down, he ran a hand down the body of the Odishan. Two pistols and another knife. He tucked these away and made for the guy Gabe had just dropped.

"Oh Marce-e-e-e-l..." Reaper crooned in the darkness. "Come out, I just wanna talk." He knew where Marcel was: cringing under his desk, probably due to bolt any second now. But why make it easy for him? He advanced on the remaining two guards, spinning a knife in his hand just for the joy of feeling it. They knew he was coming. He saw them cowering, twisting to search the nothing, raising their weapons. They were lined up so neat, one in front and a little to the right of the other. There was a wall behind them...

He thrust the kukri into his belt and pulled out one of the heavy, cold shotguns. The blast churned the smoke at the windows. Jack smiled and dragged Tennant up by his suit jacket to press his face against the glass, where it emerged into the sun like a stubbled chicken breast floating to the surface of a lake.

"Why'd you do it?"

"I didn't--"

Cracks began to form over the pane around Marcel's cheekbone as Jack pushed him down with patient strength.

"Try again."

"Blackwatch was getting too powerful..." Marcel spoke as fast as he could with his face jammed down and his mouth smearing froglike over the glass. "...And  _you_  weren't going to shut them down. Steps had to be taken..." He broke into a cough. The fine grit of the blackout gas tended to do that to a person, if they weren’t wearing a mask with a filter, like the one hiding Jack’s nasty smirk. An innovation of Winston’s; he had thought of it one time when he was face-down in Reaper’s cellular smoke trail.

"Coulda given me a chance, Marcel."

The cracks threaded out.

"Jack--"

Jack cut him off with honest doubt. "I don't buy it. Think I'll let him handle interrogation."

"I don't!--"

Reaper's purr cut through this whining. "They're coming. Five, down the hall." He looked up. "Three in the ceiling."

"Think I can handle the hall." Jack said.

"Marcel?"

"What about Marcel?" He was already drawing a pistol out of the back of his jeans.

"Sombra wants him."

"Does Sombra deserve him?" Jack said nastily. Marcel squirmed beneath his hand, trying to brace himself on the window and push back.

"I want him to suffer."

Jack snarled and brought the butt of the pistol down on the back of Marcel's head. "You owe me."

Gabe spoke quickly. "Rifle on the--"

"I got it." Jack hummed, pulling the strap under his arm and lighting up the generator with a flick of his thumb.

Three thousand yards away  _Ready to go_  appeared on Lena Oxton's HUD. "All right!" She shouted to nobody and grinned tremendously. She drove the heli down into the shining canyon of skyscrapers and felt the hot summer wind push back against her cheerfully. Pretty easy to tell which one was the right one: just look for the black smoke that poured down the side of a building out of nowhere. When she got close she could see them both emerging from the miasma, standing close to each other and mask to mask.

"What's going on?" Sombra's voice cut in on her headset.

"Think they got it! I'm getting them now."

"Let me look...." Far away, she helped herself to the video feed from the heli's cams. ".... _Ugh_."

"I  _knooooow_." Lena complained.

"They're all covered in blood too."

 

* * *

 

 

"I get what you're saying," Jack said, incredulous. "But what the hell does that have to do with us having sex?"

Angela shifted in her seat. "It was the best way to cement the right image in his mind."

He shook his head. "I don't get it, Angie."

"Hmmm..." She tucked one leg under herself and leaned on the arm of the chair. It took some thought to form a reply. "You two have known each other a long time."

"Mmhm." He was 22 when he first met Reyes; 25 the first time Gabe saved his life. A lifetime ago. They'd been all over the world together, fought wars side by side together, carried each other out of fire, bailed each other out of jail, worked together to build Overwatch, and tore it out of each others' hands. Gabe used to call Jack's parents by their first names. Jack used to mail weird albums to Rafael, Gabe's brother, from wherever they were stationed. They’d lost each other even before Switzerland.

"Isn't it important what he thinks of you?"

"Huh?" Jack rubbed his shoulder. His mouth set, guardedly.

She tried to proceed regardless. "You really wouldn't mind if he thought you were, say, doing something foolish, making a bad decision?"

That just got her a wry look.

"Come on, Jack. I know it would bother you. You don't like to admit it, but it would."

"What's your point?"

"He's the same way. Your opinion matters to him."

His low "Yeah..." was dismissive.

"It matters to him more than you think. A lot more."

"And?" He didn't believe her, that much was clear.

"Oh, you're being difficult. Alright. We'll start over. You trust Ana, don't you?"

A swift readjustment of attitude. "With my life."

"If Ana told you that you were doing something stupid, you would listen, wouldn't you?"

"...Sure. Dunno if I'd let it stop me but — she's probably right."

"If she were horrified at something you did, wouldn't you get the feeling you had done something horrible? Perhaps even if you didn't feel that way about it before?"

He thought about it. It wasn't a pleasant thought. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Gabriel too. He would listen to her."

"And you're saying he'd listen to me too."

"It's much stronger than that. If you were a little more honest, I think you would say the same thing about him." She added tartly. "In a way, he looks to you to tell him who he is."

"You're kidding." Jack said slowly.

She ignored that. "We tested extensively. Nobody else brought up such a strong and clear response from him. Really, it was not even close. Especially not when it came to appearance."

Jack's astonished chuckle was his only response.

"Am I right to assume you were attracted to him, before?" She asked, like she hadn't grown up under them and felt the low crackle of tension in any room where they were alone, or seen Jack's string of Gabe-like affairs.

He squinted, apprehensive. "Maybe."

"I think he knew that. It didn't matter to him if Lena thought he was ugly," She laughed. "But he never wanted to show you his face after he came back. It frightened him that you ever would, you know."

"Ha ha - why?" A sort of unaccountable interest showed on his face now, like a ray of sunlight.

"I have been trying to tell you for a hour! Your opinion matters to him. He looked to you to tell him what he was. He wanted you to see only the old Gabriel Reyes."

He watched her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"That was the Gabriel Reyes you had to show him. Do you understand?"

He looked away, to the door, trying to hide his thoughts. They were obvious, even so.

"For this to have any chance of working, we had to bring him to an emotional and physical peak, and give him the strongest possible image of himself. Of his best self. You were his mirror, Jack. Now, you mustn't ever tell him I told you any of this..."

One of his white eyebrows lifted.

"...This is private; it was not easy for him."

 _An emotional and physical peak_. Much of this was lost on Jack, the implications too big, but he held this in his thoughts. Not a fight, not some kind of electro stimulation, not skydiving, not anything else, but  _that._ Not with anyone else, but  _him_.

"It's a lot to think about."

"Promise me you won't say anything to him." There was worry in her voice.

"Don't worry, Angie. I won't." A loose smile played around his lips, even as he visibly tried to stop. "I don't see how it'd ever come up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man i cant believe i finished a thing i NEVER finish things. its part of my charm. this was a lot of fun to think about though. i hope you had fun reading it too. i will be editing it with A CERTAIN SOMEONE'S NOISY HELP so u may find some updates and small changes if you come back at a later point.
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> I'm a Reinhardt main so I don't know nothing about no Soldier 76 or Reaper. Apologies for anything here that breaks lore. 
> 
> Thanks:
> 
> Thanks Peep and Faye for being the bestests and most encouragingest pals to ever provoke me through a chapter. And for putting up with my endless blithering. Additional thanks to Peep for ru's notepad.
> 
> Thanks Kanati for the advice that broke the logjam.
> 
> Thanks Sun for working out the new gabe swing. Per Sun's directive, I have to inform all readers that by reading this fic you have agreed to adopt and cherish a black cat from a local animal shelter.
> 
> Thanks Chels for making me ship r76, and for the angle on reaps that I wound up extrapolating here in ways you would probably frown at. 
> 
> Thanks to pals generally for letting me lean myself into this incredibly contrived story.
> 
> Thanks to the overwatch boyfriends discord for making me ship merhog. Yall pls look forward to additional merhog one-shot featuring the Mercy from this story.


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